B3Progress
From Simreal
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B3 Progress Reports
18 Jan 01
No, I haven't died or lost interest in robots. But I have been a bit distracted the last few months. In a good way!
We've build the wheel suspension on the big frame, and added casters -- but haven't come up with the three-grand yet to drop in the first hydraulic system.
Work is mostly stopped since Christmas season, though I assume we will eventually start again. Until we get lots of cash, the next step will be to start cutting and welding the weapons arms.
18 Aug 00
Since the competition was called off (for now), progress has slowed. However, we have:
- Completed the basic mechanical design
- Welded the main framework together (gotta love that welder!)
- Abandonded the Toronado suspension
- Cut and drilled the custom suspension
One of our sponsors is still interested in supporting the project, so we should be able to purchase the drive hydraulics soon-ish.
19 June 00
The entire B3 system has been sketched out, and you could see it in the B3 pictures area if we had one <grin>
There are many minor details to work out still; how we will place the shock-absorber tower for the dynamic suspension; where we want to mount valves and tanks; how to route oil lines. And one big detail, the armour, will have to wait until we have more of B3 assembled.
Detailed CAD is underway now, with an eye to cut lists, material inventory, and part lists. We hope to pick up steel this week, and order the hydraulics and radio next week, assuming we can scrape enough budget from the current (limited) pool of sponsors to do so.
Cutting and Assembly to commence soon. Glenn Currie has generously allowed us to use his horizontal metal-cutting bandsaw, as well as his (very nice) Lincoln MIG gas-shielded welder.
That VW engine (from Undergound VW, here in Austin) is wonderful. It purrs like a kitten (well, lion) at idle, and roars to life easily. With the glass-pack mufflers, I swear it actually says "Vroom." You should have seen the team, standing around the engine grinning all night!
12 June 00
Things are picking up at the B3 lab. I may need to go to weekly updates, and break them out by month at this rate!
We have solved the pincher geometry issues in the prototype, and are exploring the "stinger" (tail) now. The tail has been simplified down to a planar motion. By the end of this week all of the major systems will have been prototyped and the final CAD work should be well under way as well. Final construction will commence soon after.
Our exploration of power plants has been exciting and eventful. We were able to start and run one of our Kohler two-strokes early on, but we've been looking for replacements ever sine we discovered the hassles of tapered-shafts. One of the Robot Group members donated a type-3 VW engine to the cause, but it turns out that it has been well damaged by the rain. At the VW repair shop where I was having this engine inspected, they had a running type-1 engine that had been "hopped-up" and was in very nice shape... only the car it was in was a wreck. It was cheaper to buy that than to fix our donation, so I did.
On the bright side, Vadim's donated engine came with a wonderful custom engine mount that we are using... and which is saving us endless amounts of time on that issue. We should be firing our new engine up this week sometime.
I discovered that custom drive shafts, to go between our hydraulic motor and wheel, cost $550 each in our current design. Design changes could bring that down to about $250 each, which isn't so bad. Further design changes, however, eliminates the cost entirely... so we are abandoning our beautiful '77 Oldmobile Toronado swing arms and will do a custom front-end suspension. With this, we can use a hydraulic wheel motor that mounts directly to the hub, and saves us a fortune (at the expense of a fair amount of construction hassle). The final CAD work is beginning soon, and with that we get to confirm placement of all components and piping. It will take a couple of weeks, but once it is complete, we start building in steel. Need to order parts, soon, too! We might have just enough money available to build the driving platform, but we need to wait for sponsor income to power the weapons.
New pictures and design drawings should make it up to the web later this month. The parts technical details, and system costs, are growing out of date, too, and would benefit from updates. Stay tuned!
20 May 00
It has been a busy month since the last update! The competition has been moved to mid-November, which is excellent news for all involved. Now I am pestering the show to increase the wheeled-vehicle weight limits, so B3 would not only have some interesting weapons, but a modicum of defense too!
We have re-built the B3 frame to slightly larger standards, and plan to increase the width by yet another 6" to help accomodate some of the parts.
After the frame re-build, we also did a prototype of the front pinchers out of 2x2 fir. We were working with the single-cylinder design for this and, while the prototype worked perfectly, it also highlighted a number of issues with this design. Notably, keeping the pinchers centered would require some special "guide" arrangement, and some of the joints would be complex to make.
So, we are now back to contemplating the two-cylinder pincher design. More details and pictures when we settle on something.
The attack tail has been back and forth on the question of lateral positioning. Do we use a "tripod" arrangement, with two cylinders, like Mechadon's legs? Or do we use the "lazy-susan" arrangement, with motorized rotation?
I used to be a avid fan of the lazy-susan approach, but one of our other projects was to make cardboard mockups of all major internal components for the robot. This highlighted how little space there was to work with, and I'm not sure how we could FIT the lazy-susan tail. So I think we may end up with the tripod tail and some fancy driving to protect our backside.
18 April 00
Let me catch you up here. About six months ago, the SCI FI Channel started to make noises about a large-scale robot competition. This sounded exciting, so several members of the Robot Group started paying attention... and thinking.
As of now, we have built a Lego Technic prototype, and decided our first design was too complex. So we have simplified many of the mechanisms, and are working on a wooden prototype. When we are confident our measurements and part placement are good, we will build the steel final model.
Starting in May (if not sooner), we will be soliciting funds to create this monster. Cost is estimated at $8,000, though depending on the whims of fate, it could low-ball as small as $5,000 or go as high as $10,000 or so. We plan on using surplus parts, to maintain low cost, except for the radio control system, where we want to go top-notch.
Check out our current pictures and notes there, and come back every once in a while to see how things are going!
We hope to have completed all fund raising, and have parts purchased by the end of May. This gives us June and July to construct the robot, and the first couple of weeks of August to test and tune. If any of us retain our sanity by the end of this project, it will be a miracle.
