Earthwormjim's Stuff

[Shakey]

White strong and flexible is indeed nylon, it is much toughter than PLA as PLA has problems with brittleness. ABS is a much better choice for FDM printers (ABS is a much tougher filament to use when printing). Also there are methods (such as acetone vapours) that can greatly increase layer adhesion with ABS

[earthwormjim]

Hi mathias.
I would rather have a machined hardox weapon, for sure, but using a 3D printed weapon makes sense for me. I dont have the machinery to machine anything myself, so printing is comparatively cheap, quick and easy. I enjoy the CAD design side of it too. Only time will tell how well it holds up. If it fails or warps, then I will look at an alternative, or re design it. It is all part of the development of a robot. 3D printing gives the advantage of being able to design any shape, and even use hollow sections where appropriate, and it is a fraction of the cost of having a chunk of material machined. 3D printing a weapon on anything bigger than an antweight might be asking for trouble, but hopefully I can get away with it at this scale. The chassis is not meant for a direct hit, hence the armour, my printer at work prints in PLA and ABS. Printed chassis that I have used in the past have held up very well. ABS especially holds up very well. Shapeways WSF is undoubtedly very good, I use it because it because the printing process means that there are none of the design restrictions that there are with non-professional 3D printers, like layer orientation, or support structures, etc.
At the end of the day though, if a good size chunk of sharpened spinning metal comes into contact with any of the 3D printed plastics, the result will be more or less the same. The plan is to keep the soft bits away from the fast spinning hard bits! Sometimes though, that's not very easy to do!!

[earthwormjim]

Found a box of bits in the shed while tidying up earlier...



Robot Graveyard!!

[joey_picus]

All of those were wonderful I still fondly remember El Chupacabra especially, that design would be brilliant against spinners I'm sure...

[haz]

I wish I found stuff like that in my shed!

Have a nostalgia team next event mate.

[earthwormjim]

He he, yeah, actually, I have been working on an El Chupacabra 2 recently!! Creepy crawly was definitely the most fun to drive though! LOL.
Harry, I am going to come and kidnap you for the next AWS!!

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Can you both kidnap each other so you both can come please?

[earthwormjim]

Can you both kidnap each other so you both can come please?

I would be up for that!! No problem at all.

[haz]

Hah, lets do it!

[earthwormjim]

Hi.
I thought I'd update an old idea I have been playing around with for what seems like ages.
I was trying to move move the controls around on my old custom DX6i transmitter.
I finally have it doing what it is supposed to. However, I am not entirely sure exactly how useful it is going to be!!

It was designed for use with a 3 wheeled omniwheel robot, that would move in 3 axis.
The parts for the robot are still in a drawer, awaiting a 3 channel speed controller.
(Also for use with quadcopters/helicopters, giving realistic yaw movement control.)
Here is a video showing the switching of the rudder channel from the left stick onto the new twist control mounted on the right stick...
Awesome Youtube link
The only bad point is the twist control does not self center. If I could find one that did, I think it would be very usable and intuitive.