Tuesday 22 December 2009

2009 Round Up.

This is our last day for 2009, and a good point to finish on, we have the leg running under control of the HexEngine, currently the leg is still missing the metatarsus ram which arrived today, the coxa ram is fitted but needs to be plumbed up. Finishing the hydraulics for the test leg will be our first job in the new year. I'm starting to wonder if we actually needed low friction seals on our rams, it seems there is a fair amount of leakage across the piston seals, that may be causing some undesirable issues. TBC.

The load pin has arrived, so we will also look at fitting this upon our return. I have yet to decide how I am going to wire this in to the HexEngine, I think I will need to modify the FACU box to take auxiliary analogue inputs, or create a new box that will also sit on the 485 bus which will act as an analogue/digital I/O module.

There is much work to do on the FACU control unit, safety features to check, PCB to finalise etc. Also the data stream mode needs to be added to the HexEngine, along with the position/status report packet back from the FACU.