Robotic Desk Racers - Part Two

I decided my robotics program needed some kind of logo.......

A day of steady progress.  Racer A needed to have some things shored up a bit.  We moved the battery to the lower deck and it made the entire machine much, much more stable.  A rotating flasher was also added for fun.

It turns out that some of the drive issues are because left and right are reversed on the controller.  To fix this it was necessary to re-route the wiring to the proper side.  I never show student's faces but this shot does capture their body language as they sort through the "wire spaghetti.".

Racer B will be a step up in difficulty.  It always is when you are building more from scratch.

For this one we are using Dumont gear boxes which are ridiculously over engineered.  Look at all that metal.  I did not have hubs for these.  Now, I could buy them on ebay for five dollars a pair, or...

Have the kids make 'em out of plywood.  Here is the final gearbox/hub/wheel assembly.  The wheels are Axman surplus and came off of airport luggage carts.

The gearboxes may be solid but various other elements of this are less sturdy than you might prefer, so we will see how this racer holds up to drive testing.  We hope to have it running next week.