Week of 11/10

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, tapped and attached the two new pieces to either side of the rover. Even with this one simple change the stability of the rover had already increased massively. All of the wheel make full contact with the ground and there is minimal slack in the suspension.

Far more stable

New wheel

After making this first adjustment, I moved on to fixing the other issues which made the rover unstable. Even though with the first adjustment improving this issue, I still wanted to ensure that all weak points had been strengthened. This then led my attention to the main bracket which attached the entire suspension onto the main body of the rover. On the updated design, I moved it from sitting on the top, to instead, resting on the bottom. Then I added a triangle to help strengthen it even more and prevent it from bending. After this, I then moved to the second joint, with which I increase the length to allow for holes to be added so that I can securely attached the 2d cut legs of the rover. After this was done, I then increased the size of the wheels as I think it will allow the rover to not get caught on any large bumps and will allow it to traverse over greater obstacles.

More stable

At the end of my week, I looked for some possible candidates for stronger motors. I was mostly unsuccessful however I did find a pretty fast 24v motor which also had a very good amount of torque which may be a candidate for the future. As for the overall design of the rover, the only other things that need to be changed in the future is updated mounts for the motors and the 2d acrylic replaced with aluminum.