Thursday, March 19, 2009

we have a problemm.


In our more rigorous testing of the dethinator (involving using bags of empty soda cans as targets - even though the bot still doesn't have teeth) we have come to the conclusion that something needs to be changed. We burnt out a motor. Completely. I don't know how or why, but it started smoking and is totally locked up. This happened at 2:45 ish in our preliminary time test. I'm starting to doubt the robustness of the design, because those little motors seem really wimpy. I think we need to buy bigger motors and use them, like the duratrax 550 motors that eddie is using. At $8.99 each, I think we can afford them. :P We wouldn't have to TOTALLY redo all the wiring, we can still use a lot of the infrastructure we already have in place. We would have to leave two wheels as idlers, with no motor behind them, to support the shell, and then run a belt on pulleys from the motors to the other two, and take two out altogether. This should drop some weight too.

7 comments:

Alan Dreher said...

What time does the build start tommorrow?

Dan Curhan said...

ummm 9:30, 10 ish? I'll call you when I leave. My dad has a morning doctor's appt so it depends on when he gets back from that.

Alan Dreher said...

Ok. Sounds good to me.

Anonymous said...

there's a build today????? grrr

Alan Dreher said...

One tommorrow too... Dan, what time tommorrow?

Dan Curhan said...

early, i'm leaving here before 8 AM cause i have to work.

Alan Dreher said...

I guess I will try to be there are around 9:00