Chassis fine adjustments..

While stood admiring our chassis, Josh noticed the front two coxa axis were slightly lozenged! We worked out they were adrift by approximately one degree, so time to break out the grinder and 8 tonne crane jack for a fine adjustment.

Our chassis gets wheels, temporarily!

We have added scaffold clamps to the inside of our chassis so that we can wheel it around while we are working on it, and of course as a safety feature if we need to work under it! Also re-arranged the workshop so we can wheel it to the back and still get the CNC trailer in at night.

Josh tries out the driving position.

The Chassis Arrives!

Dave from Phoenix delivered our chassis this afternoon, for some reason it seems smaller than both Josh and I imagined, probably because it is missing the legs!

Dave admires his handy work.

Solenoid Counterbalance Valves

The rest of our Sun Hydraulics order arrived! These manifolds have a solenoid valve inserted at one end, and would usually have pilot operated check valves on A and B which are piloted from the operation of the solenoid. We have replaced the pilot check valves with 5:1 counterbalance valves, so in normal operation the counterbalance valves should be help open by the pilot lone from the solenoid. When the solenoid is off, they should act as pressure relief valves to the rams.

Operator Interface Chair

The second control was completed today and fitted to the operator chair. Very please with the look and feel of the operator interface. The plan is to fit the operator touch screen to the right control box. We may have to add additional support to the arm rest in order to stiffen the structure.

Operator Present Hack

In order to add the operator present indication to the P&G JC400 joysticks, I had to hack a sensor capacitive touch sensor onto the joystick. To do this I added a brass ring around the top of the grip, and using one of the unused Z axis wires, connected this to a sensor PCB inside the control box. I also tied a PCB sensor on the top of the grip, however, this interfered with the fir of the rubber grip cover, so I reverted to a few coils of wire on the top which also connect the brass ring to the sensor PCB.

Operator Interface Controls

I have finished the master control for the operator interface, Josh made a bracket to fix the control box to the arm rests on the operator chair, adjustable via T nuts. The controls feel good, and I hope will be fairly intuitive. I also added a capacitive touch sensor into the top of the joystick that will work as the operator present signal.

Ankle joint sensor

Just finished installing and wiring up the 16 switches that make up our ankle joint angle sensor, a fiddly job! I have wired all the switches in parallel for now, so that we get a contact when the ball joint is at its limit.

Leg welding is nearly finished

Our welded leg sections are coming together nicely at Dave's workshop. He has them all tacked in place, ready for final welding, along with grinding back the outer and inner welds for a smooth surface.

We have moved him on to the chassis so that we can get it back to our workshop and start to figure out where everything goes!