This week I continued to work on getting my PCB working. At the end of last week I was able to get the transmitting PCB metro mini working. However the two PCB's were not properly communicating with one another. So this week I continued to look for solutions to this problem. At the start of the week I recreated the breadboard for the transmitter to try and see if it was the problem or if it was the receiving PCB. When I first set it up I ran into a problem. Not only was the t

This week, I spent a lot of my time continuing to work on designing my controller for the Rover. At the start of this week I designed a new schematic for the second transmitting PCB which would act as part of the controller. After, I moved onto designing the PCB. At first I opted in for a large design in a controller shape which would help to act as the base for the PCB. Once complete, I switched the design to 3d and worked on creating the surrounding items necessary for the

This week I was able to complete a lot of work on the PCB. At the start of the week I finished up the design for my PCB. I added in all of the necessary components for the receiver, motors, motor driver, and battery. Once this was complete, I moved onto routing the PCB connections. At first, the design was not working, however after adjusting where all of the components were, while still maintaining optimal positions for connection points, I was able to get it fully routed an

Deformed piece This week I was able to make a lot of progress on the physical design of the rover. At the start of the week I noticed that I needed to finish cutting the long legs of the rover. However before I was able to do that, I needed to create a new file with a hole through the piece as it was where I would be able to attach the differential to it once finished with assembly. Once this step was complete, I loaded the new file onto the thumb drive and went into the mach

With another shortened week due to the snow, on Wednesday when I arrived back to the shop, I decided to take a short break from my main project to focus on creating a small gift for my Dad's birthday. After thinking of small tools I could possibly make using metal, I decided on creating a bottle opener. Soon after, I started work on the design. After doing a little research and looking at other examples, I created a final design for the opener. After this was done the next st

Link to test video: https://docs.google.com/videos/d/160aknYAZuPk-UEUWx3QdZ4mF4qFu6cr8ACexe5f6A34/edit?usp=sharing At the very beginning of the week, I was able to completely finish 3d printing all of the remaining treads with the help of Mr. L who printed them in the mornings before shop time. After this was complete, I took the treads and attached them all onto the rover. Now it was time to test the rover again with all of the fully complete treads. After setting of the con

This week, I was able to make a lot of progress on my rover. Firstly, before I was able to test of my rover with all of the new additions, I first needed to finish printing all of the remaining treads. After setting up the 3d printer once again with Mr. L I started the next print which took 18 hours. However once finishing we realized what this issue was: when the filament coil had tension, not enough came out to properly print the treads with full strength. However now that

This week, we again were cut short to only two working days due to the heavy snow over last weekend. During my time in the shop this week, I first finalized my updated tread design, making sure the grousers were the right, shape, width, and height for the new design. After, I ensured that the new thickness was correct and I that I could begin the final print. Before I started the print however, I worked with Mr. L again to help set up the filament once again. As the TPU is be

This week, I was we did not have very much time in shop, however during my time in the shop, I was able to achieve the goals I set out to accomplish. Due to the TPU arriving, I was able to begin printing my wheels and see how the finished product looked. However first, along with the help of Mr. L, we had to attach the new TPU to the 3d printer, which took far longer than expected, having to troubleshoot and retry the attachment multiple times before it finally worked. On the

This week, I spent my time redesigning at finalizing the design for the treads for the wheels of my rover. However before getting to this step, the first thing that I wanted to get out of the way this week was to order the new TPU filament for the treads. After doing a final look for TPU to make sure I had what I wanted, it was ready to go. The 85a variant of TPU will provide a great amount of traction with a I friction coefficient, allowing the rover to far more easily climb

This week I spent my time brainstorming and finalizing a design for the wheels. After finishing the old design for the wheels I found one major flaw. Due to how small the motor shaft was, it made the wheel connector far less stable than that a larger and more defined shape to fit to the wheels. Due to the the motor shaft shape being very close to a circle, when moving the wheels at all while attached to the motors caused the filament to completely strip away losing the tight

This week was mainly spent on fully trying to get all of the new wheels printed and assembled. To start the week, I wanted to quickly work on cutting out new rear legs for the suspension. The main reason for doing this was on the previous cut, I had forgotten to include holes for the differential to attach to. This left the top body of the rover unstable, so I quickly completed the new cut. After this, I next moved to redesigning the wheel, I had to make a few adjustments to

This week, I fully finished my updated design for my new motor mounts. At the start of the week, after confirming the sizing for my motor mounts, I decided to print out all of the remaining motor mounts for the other motors on the rover. Once I had finished printing them, I took them out, and ensured that they had all been printed correctly without any issues. Once that was complete, I needed to pry out all of the 3d printed scaffolding inside of the casing, this ended up tak

This week I started by first designing my a new model for my motor mount. Initially, I was not a huge fan of the design, the motors did not have the strongest torque and I wanted a higher RPM. Instead I decided to settle with a slightly higher powered motor however, this required me to design a brand new motor mount to house the updated design. Once figuring this out, I took the dimensions of the motor and then came up with my first design however this design was far from ide

This week I finally finished mounting all of the final stability modifications onto the rover. On Monday, I was finally finished printing all of the parts. Once this step was done then I next went over to the machine shop. While I was there I press fit the bearings into the brand new bracket mounts using the vice grip as the tolerance was very low however now they fit tightly in their holes. After this I then tapped my new join piece which did not take long. Once this was com

Updated joint This week I made a lot of progress on fixing many of the stability errors in my design for the rover. The first major design change that I thought of was making a critical adjustment regarding the first joint of the rover. In my new design, I connected the second bearing to the first joint in a single part, this would ensure that the second bearing would be secured far more stably inside the filament instead of the acrylic. After I finished this I then printed,

This week, I made a lot more progress on my design and was able to do a lot more testing of my rover and was able to conclude many takeaways from the project thus far. However, before I got to this point, I first decided to try creating treads to add on the wheels instead of ordering from amazon using a new material Mr. L had bought for 3d printing. All 6 of the treads ended up taking not very much time. I was able to completely finish all the treads in one day, and they all

This week I spent a lot of time getting all of the parts of my rover ready for the assembly of the new suspension. Due to the many different moving parts, it took quite a while to get all of the wheels, motors, joints, nut, bolts, and bearings off of the rover. Before it was time to assemble, I went to the machine shop to fully tap all of the new 3d printed joint pieces so that they could be screwed in and attached to the bearings. Once this was complete, I began to assemble

This week I spent most of my time making the final adjustments to cad before making all of the new and updated pieces for the suspension. This mainly entailed fixing certain constraints and breaking apart and combining various models. Once this was complete I next transferred over to begin creating each of the new parts. I first started with 3d printing all of the new joints which did not take long to finish. After this I had to adjust the length of the differential legs to a

At the end of last week on Friday, I was finally able to preform the very first test of my rover. I was happy to see that it was able to move great. I drove it around the entire robotics shop with no difficulties and the transmitter and receiver are both working perfectly. However the issue begins with trying to get the rover over obstacles. The current flaw with the rover is its lack of traction, with only a small layer of double sided tape attached to the wheels. The proble

Throughout this week, I have made many new major strides in getting the rover prototype completed. At the start of this week, I worked on...

This week I spent a lot of time working on redesigning the wheels on my rover. Originally, I was not entirely sure what the best design...

This week I completed a lot of work on my Rover project. The first thing that I started off by working on was the differential. After 3d...

This week I started off by going back into cad and making some changes to the design of the suspension. Originally, at the axis of the...