SUBLIME3

As promised in the last report, I finished up my custom nicad packs, and started on the chain drives. This is my first robot that uses chain transmisions, and I can say that so far it has been kinda fun! On a side note, in my past roports I have to keep saying, "shown be left picture" "shown by right picture" in these updates. I'm sick of it and I'm sure you are to so I will first describe the left picture, than the right picture in every report from now on.

In the last report I had just assembled the cells to form the shape of the battery packs, in this report I finished them. I first prepared the cells for soldering by cleaning them with a wire wheel on my dremil. I then soldered little peices of 14 Guage wire across the cells.

I already matched the cells I'm using when I made the orriginal packs for Sublime2. So here I am discharging each cell completely so they all charge up equally when the pack is charged. After the whole pack was discharged I decided to make cardboard sides to protect my soldering, here I am tracing the pack.

Here I am showing you the back cover cutout against the battery, I made one for the front as well. I then placed both covers on to get the complete battery! There will be 4 of these packs in the final robot.

The #25 chain sprockets I'm using only cost $2 a pop surplus, but they came with an odd size bore, it was a little over 3/4". I needed to make an adapter to fit them to my 1/2" drive shafts. Here is a LONG peice of 1" stainles round stock that I decided to use to make the adapter. I cut a 4" peice off, more than enough to make all the adapters. I needed to turn the 1" round stock down to the proper size so I chucked it up in the lathe and started to turn it down, after it was just the right size for the sprocket to fit over it I drilled a 1/2" hole through the center for the axle to pass through. After that I cut the 4" long bushing down to four 1" long ones and I was done.

I slipped the bushing I just made onto the shaft coming out of the bearing, then I put the sprockets over those, perfect fit!.

Only the back of the robot has two sprockets, the one closest to the bearing connects to the sprocket on the front tire to give 4WD, the second sprocket is where the power from the motor will come from, in this shot you can see the chain connecting the two wheels, minus the chain tensioner since I havn't made it yet. Here both sides are done.

Here is a picture of the sprocket for the chain tensioner, and where in will go after I make the bracket for it. Here is a chunk of 6061 alluminum that will become that bracket.

Every one gets hurt working on their robots, I'm no exception here is the first, and probably not last injury, a sliced knuckle. I thought I might share some pictures with you of my schools metal shop where I have done everything so far except making the battery's. First off here is where my robot lives when I'm not working on him.

Here is a shot of the mill I use, this sucker gots guts! Here is a shot of the lathe I use, I'm not sure when it was made but it was over 50 years ago! It even came with a name painted in red letters "La Blonde."

Here is the ever usefull plasma cutter, if you never have used one before it is sweet! think of cutting solid 1" steel plate like butter! Here is a shot of the mig, and tig welders. (I'm learning to tig alluminum right now!)

Here is the arc welding booths, I don't use these much... Here is the extremely cool sand casting area! look for some custom cast alluminum parts later in the build!

Here is the hydrolic bandsaw, Verry nice for cutting square and round stock. Here is the hydrolic shear, VERRY easy to cut flat and angle stock.

Here is the steel rack, there is allot of selection! the only prob. with my metals class is they mostly do steel, so I always have to get my own alluminum. Here is a shot of the tool box.

last but not least is the sheet metal tools! Here are the two floor standing, manual shears. After you cut your peice of sheet metal you can bend it any way you like on the sheet metal bender!