Week of 10/27

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 the new suspension.

Far more range of motion

New motor mounts

Differential leg too short for updated suspension, needs to be 3d printed

This process ended up being quite tedious, as mounting all six motors took quite a while. However now that it is all done, the new suspension design works far better. The first major issue this design fixes is a far larger range of motion, allowing the rover to be able to drive up and over more steep obstacles. On top of this, the steeper angle of the joints means the wheels are less spread out, this allows for the design as a whole to be far more stable. The only issue I currently see with the wheels is the small amount of outwards pronation of the suspension which is due to the slightly weak nature of the laser cut acrylic. In the future, I may switch out the pieces for stronger aluminum, but for now this is not a major issue. Finally, I just need to decide on whether I should follow through with ordering the wheels online, or 3d printing custom tires with the new filament my teacher Mr. L has recently bought. I hope to come to a conclusion about this soon, and hope to test this new design early next week. \