Test rig de-commission

Time to de-commission the test rig.. it's served it's purpose.. for now.

Just took a few pictures in case I have to re-build the support frame that I plan on scrapping.

The Romsey Clear Out

Finished with the 2500sqft workshop, so time to clear out.. feels good to move on :)

Didn't realize just how much space I used up!

LED Head Light Test

LED Leg Light test

Nearly Finished!

Fitting the Polycarbonate Panels

Fitting the Cab

Securing the Mantis with Ratchet Straps

Cutting the window panels

Polycarbonate window panels, 3mm thick Makralon UV grade. Cut out with a jigsaw on a polystyrene sheet. These panels were first patterned in cheap fibre board.

Hexapod on the trailer

Trailer

Foot version 2

The office leaves

Femur side plates

--
Matt Denton

micromagic systems ltd
www.micromagicsystems.com
www.hexapodrobot.com

End of leg rebuild with new joint bearings

Finished re-building the legs with the new joint axle and taper roller bearings. All went together very nicely, much easier than the previous system! Tomorrow I will get the encoders hooked up and start the calibration procedure. The maybe a test!

The New Femur & Tibia Axles

The first Femur axle in place, with half the Coxa and Femur cheeks. 

The completed Femur joint

The occasional stubborn bearing needed this jig to get it started. Thank goodness I add M8 tapped holes in the ends of the axle!

Half way there, all the femurs back on.

Not bad for one days work.. on my own!

And another day with help and the tibia's are back in place.

New joint bearing parts

I picked up the bearing housings from D&T today. I was hoping to get everything but its been delayed until Wednesday, still I'm going to push on and fit the bearing housing to the aluminium cheeks. You can see at the top right of the picture one of the 0.1mm laser cut shims I have had made to offset any cheeks that are of differing thickness. This is because the 25mm sheet aluminium cut parts came in a range of thickness's from 25.0 to 25.4 .

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.

New Cooler pipe work

Here is the new cooler pipe work layout. The cooler sits horizontal when mounted so the filter will end up in a vertical position.

Cooler baffle Issue

Well this would be why our cooler wasn't doing much cooling, check out the gape around the baffle!

The Bad!

And this is what is should have looked like.

TheGood!