Build Your Own Combat Robot

322 Build Your Own Combat Robot
FIGURE 14-11
Live Wires with
the motors, chains,
wheels, batteries,
and motor
controllers hooked
up prior to its first
live testing for TLC.
off like a bat out of Hades. I put the brakes on, and Live Wires skidded to a stop.
Reverse worked just fine; then I raced it around the lot, and the robot even turned
on a dime. It put on a great show for the cameras for the TLC crew. It took out the
55-gallon drum, gave Dave Owens a nice ride, and nimbly ran around the traffic
cones that were laid out in a slalom coarse. Our creation couldn’t have worked
any better.
Step 7: Building the Frame
After the great show Live Wires put on, we started building the frame of the robot.
We used 4-inch-tall aluminum C-channels for all of the sides of the robot.
Figure 14-12 shows the frame structure prior to being bolted onto the robot. You
will notice that we had to cut a few notches in the bottom of the channels to account
for the pillow blocks. After the frame was built, we made a set of aluminum
boxes to hold the batteries in place. The last thing you want are for the batteries to
rattle around inside your robot.
After the TLC guys left, we noticed that we had the same motor shaft adapter
failure we had the night before. Luckily, it had held together long enough for the
video taping. I still wanted a bolt-on type of solution with the threaded motor
shaft, so I spent a lot of time looking at different approaches. The proper way would
be to pin the adapter onto the shaft, but I didn’t want to go that route. I decided to
use the same type of mounting method the Jacobs chuck uses to attach to the motor
shaft. Figure 14-13 shows this new adapter. One side is for using a removable pin