Tuesday 20 March 2012

Legs Stripped Down... Again!

Ok, this has to be the last time! after carrying out further tests on the joints I have decided that the current spherical eye bearings are not up to the job, and although are plenty strong enough, they are allowing far too much mechanical play in the joints which is not helping the stability of the machine. So its time to re-engineer the joints with taper roller bearings similar to the coxa joint that was altered last year.

The first of six legs stripped.
Sandy came in to help me out.
Nearly finished, looks kind of cool.
All done! I bet the re-build doesn't go so smoothly!

I also decided to order more powerful rams for the coxa joints. Although the existing rams have plenty of power when pushing, the pull force is half which makes the joint tuning very difficult. With the improvement I have already seen in the tibia rams I think the coxa rams will also benefit from a larger bore 50mm cylinder.