Week of 12/15

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 the sizing of the attaching piece to ensure it fit with the new motor setup. Once this was complete, I sent over my first prototype of the new wheel. However, once it was finished, I ran into a problem. The wheel fit onto the motor, however it was ever so slightly too large, leading to there being too much slack while trying to spin the wheel.

New laser cut leg

1st attempt

To fix this issue, I tested a few variations of a smaller piece to ensure my next design would fit perfectly. The pieces were so small merely because it would allow me to quickly test new attachment pieces to ensure that the measurements were absolutely perfect without any give. After three different variation, I finally perfected the correct sizing for the wheel attachment. While these were all being printed, I researched some other alternatives to allow for better tire constructing for the wheels. This all led me to looking into the material known as TPU. Currently in the shop, we have a similar type of filament for the 3d printers, however the only difference is that the TPU online has far more traction and flexibility. The final thing I finished this week was printing out the finalized new wheels for the rover. Next week I hope to finish assembling the new rover and testing out the new design.

Other test variations

Finalized sizing