What was the weakest link?
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Side Projects:

While there is a lull between events, its time time to work on other projects - there are so many partly finished things lying around the workshop that its hard to know where to begin!

First up is the coolant system for the mill. I had the oil skimmer disk cut out last month and now the skimmer is all assembled:



Here is a short & small video of it in operation:

http://www.nswrfc.org/Nick/Skimmer.mp4

The total cost was about $90 for the motor, disk and plastic box; everything else was out of the spare parts bin, saving around $300 on a commercial unit.

The next couple of projects:

Learn to wind brushless motors - I have some crappy old motors to practise on, just need to get some wire.

CNC controller - there is much wiring to run before I can make it move any steppers.

3D printer - god knows where this will go; it could mean a new UP printer or just new software.

VFD everything - I need to invent a tacho to display the RPM and then finish off the control panels.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Well, that escalated fast!

After looking at Glen's latest weapon motor design for Decimator, I decided to super-size it and use the same motor in both Decimator and Scissorhands. By using a solid aluminium centre post and a huge thin-section bearing at the bottom of the motor, I can reduce the hight of this Rotomax out-runner to just 40mm. That means the pulley is positioned on top of the motor and it can be much smaller than the motor diameter



Ouch, no going back now . The biggest problem now is rewinding the motor for higher KV - it needs to double to about 400 to get a decent weapon speed on a 6S pack.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Interesting, I've been looking at ways to reduce the height of a smaller outrunner and I may be able to do something similar
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<Patrician|Away> what does your robot do, sam
<bovril> it collects data about the surrounding environment, then discards it and drives into walls

I tidied up the motor can in the lathe and worked on the CAD for the motor rebuild; the motor with pulley mounted on top is still under 60mm high. Depending on how large a bearing I want on the top of the motor, the pulley diameter can be 50mm or even less and the motor will also fit in the next version of Scissorhands. There is just one problem - the sleeve that fits around the original 80mm can has to be at least 90mm diameter and there is no way I can turn that in my puny little C4 lathe .

It looks like I will be buying a new lathe sooner than I thought...
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

you can use ours if you want to?
Or we can just turn up the bit you want?

(Or I can shut up and stop stopping you from getting a new lathe?)
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

I should probably just buy a bigger lathe; the current one is often limiting what I want to make.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Could you use your turn table to turn one end of a billet to a diameter that will go in your lathe, do all the work on one end and then mill off the part you used to hold the piece in the lathe?
Saves you spending $£€ on a new lathe

The major issue is turning the pulley. I can just hold the 90mm stock but getting the compound set up to reach around the stock and do both sides of the pulley is totally impossible. I was always going to get a larger lathe when I finally get a shed big enough to put it in - it just has to happen a bit sooner now. I might do a test run with plastic to see if I can get around the problem using an expanding mandrel or some other trick.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Welcome to Decimator

Decimator is now settling in to his new home at Team Overkill:



The good news is that the Rotomax weapon moter will just squeeze into the frame. The bad news is that the drive motors and gearboxes will need major machining first. Its going to need replacing the front & back plates of the gearboxes so that the motor body screws directly to the gearbox backplate without the original motor endbell - that will help an create extra 25mm of space for the Rotomax. Its an easy CNC job or a fussy manual machining job

Plan B is a different drivetrain:



The gearboxes fit as shown or if I can reposition the battery, then the gearboxes can be flipped over so the drive motors are at the back and safely away from the weapon bar.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

I could find a home for those other motors and gearboxes if you decide to get rid of them. Please let me know if you decide to sell them.
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So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems

You mean the in-runners & P60 gearboxes or the Whyachi TWA40 gearboxes and out-runners?
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

The in-runners. Assuming that you aren't going to use them.
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So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems

Those drives in decimator are its greatest asset…that thing hits so hard…you have to keep them.
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Miles Blow - Julie Pitts
www.mulesfilm.com.au
www.wombokforest.com.au

-Pickasso- Vivid Sportsman champion 2015

All you need is the motor and the p60 gearbox, you shouldn't need any fancy fabrication to fit it all up. Decimator has adaptors between the motor and gearbox as the 775 variant of the p60 wont line up with the brushless mounting holes. Fairly certain the 550 versions would.
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www.demon50s.com - Minimoto parts
http://www.youtube.com/user/HyzerGlen - Videoooozzz