Renegade Robots


	Chameleon 2.0 Progress Log October 28, 2001: One of our upgrades for the November 2001 tournament is new wheels. I actually like the old wheels better in some ways but I was unable to find spares. These wheels are almost standard at battlebots so now we have something like 8 spare wheels in case we break any wheels on the way to the giant nut. The axles have been upgraded from the old mild steel axles to O1 tool steel. We purchased these axles and the hubs which attach the colson wheels to the axles from Cruel Robots. October 28, 2001: One of our upgrades for the November 2001 tournament is new wheels. I actually like the old wheels better in some ways but I was unable to find spares when the store I bought them from went out of business. These wheels are almost standard at battlebots so now we have something like 8 spare wheels in case we break any wheels on the way to the giant nut. heh heh The axles have been upgraded from the old mild steel axles to O1 tool steel. We purchased these axles and the hubs which attach the colson wheels to the axles from Cruel Robots. October 28, 2001: Yup, it is now 1 week until we pack up and leave for the next battlebots tournament and this is the first build report... We've been busy with a little project at work called Command & Conquer Renegade. If we weren't playing the multiplayer C&C mode so much maybe the bot would be actually finished by now! This is a picture of some of the innards of Chameleon for the November 2001 tournament.

I used 1/2" drill rod to make spikes for the back of the robot. I made the spikes by grinding one end of the rod down to a point on a bench grinder and then welding the spike into a hole in the robot's frame. I heard after my fight that when you weld high-carbon steel, you need to gradually heat it up and let it gradually cool down or the area near the weld will become very brittle. A couple of my spikes were knocked off in the battle due to this effect I believe. I think I'm going to try to knock some of the others off with a hammer to see just how brittle they are.

The final and fatal flaw was that my batteries were damaged by an over-charge during one of the nights before the tournament. I was using a battery charger which you have to manually remove when the battery is fully charged. One night I forgot and left it on all night; charging two of my 12V 7aH SLA batteries up beyond 15 volts. At the time I knew this was bad for the batteries; later in the box I would find out just how bad. In my tests; my two 12V 7Ah batteries would give me a solid 4.5 minutes of driving time even when doing lots of skid steering and turning the weapon on and off. In the box, with the damaged batteries (which I didn't even mark so I had no idea whether I was using my damaged pair or the good pair) I got only 1 minute of battery life - bad news in a two minute battle. For the last minute of the match all I could do was slowly creep around to show the judges that I wasn't dead while my opponent got to beat on me. As a test, tonight I put the other set of batteries in the robot and drove it around in front of my house for a good 5 minutes with no problems. I was slamming the bot into curbs, spining, reversing, etc and everything is working fine (except the weapon wich must be re-built).

After the loss, we took the day off from battlebots and did some tourist stuff like the bay cruise. San Fransisco is a really interesting place with a lot of sights to see and things to do. The traffic/drivers stink though! :-)

I want to give special thanks to several people who I met in the pits. The Center-Punch team, "Colonel Wulfbane", the "Zombie" team, and the "Zion" team who were great neighbors. Will Wright of Super-Chia-Bot fame and Mike Winters, it was great to meet you guys and thanks for the advice and for lending me your drill. Jon, the builder of Village Idiot, I enjoyed meeting you in person, hopefully we'll bump into each other in future events. To the "Incoming" team - not all Americans hate Canadians :-).

May 19, 2001:

Wow, its been 8 days! I've been too busy to update the site lately.
Since the last update I've finished a lot of the little jobs like installing a kill switch, finishing the weapon, adding sponsor logos, etc. The weapon is now belt driven and has bigger teeth. Tonight I chewed up some 2x4's out in the street in front of our house!
Some of the photos show the spiffy "made-in-china" robot carrier I bought today at -you guessed it- Harbor Freight. The robot stuff fits in our Neon with a little room to spare for luggage. Off to Treasure Island tomorrow!

May 11, 2001:

Chameleon is nearly complete. There are a few miscellaneous things still left to do though.

Tie off all of the wiring.
Twist the motor wires, add noise suppression caps.
Finish the RC relay and find a relay/contactor that can handle the current of our weapon motor
Get some slightly larger sprockets to slow the weapon down a little bit and tighten the chain.

May 11, 2001:

Since last update I've taken the entire bot apart, finished all of the welding (spikes, armor tabs, weapon motor mounts) sprayed on two coats of primer, two coats of metallic black spraypaint, and two coats of clear.
Colin came over and worked on the armor panels, one of which you can see in one of the photos.
I built a Lexan box to hold all of the electronics and batteries.
Tonight we put the whole bot back together again and drove the bot around in front of the house for a couple minutes.
Byon brought over the custom controller which uses our friend David Yee's old PC joystick. The joystick+custom microcontroller combo didn't have a big enough dead zone for my comfort right now so we elected not to drive the bot with it tonight (don't want any accidents caused by not being able to stop the darn thing). A few minor code changes should fix that though.

May 7, 2001:

Tonight we cut a lot of lexan pieces to build a box that will hold all of our electronics and batteries. We will put a layer of mouse pads on the top and bottom of the box and this whole assembly will just squeeze into the robot between the top and bottom armor layers.
We also put together a whole mess of wet noodle wire with Anderson Power Poles and the other necessary crimp connectors. This was the first time we've wired the entire drive train up. We tested for a while with the robot up on blocks and everything looks good so far. Once we get some Lexan Glue to build the electronics enclosure, we'll be driving!

May 6, 2001:

Weapon time! Here is a picture of the weapon that chameleon will use. The first attempt at a weapon is also in the background.
As you can see, the front armor of chameleon will be all Jensens! You gotta love last minute "hacking"!

May 5, 2001:

This afternoon a local bot-builder Jeffrey Faust brought his Sherline lathe over so we could try to make a shaft that would press onto my Jensen motors. If you are interested in getting a lathe for building battlebots parts, this lathe works really well but you will probably quickly want to buy the optional parts to increase its capacity. The accuracy was nice; a big difference from the "loose" feel of the mini-lathe at the local Harbor Freight store. (Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about lathes so you might want to ignore everything I say about them here :-)
The idea was to bore a hole just slightly smaller than the diameter of the Jensen shaft and the press it on. A few things went wrong. I am using 1/2" shaft with a keyway and there was *very* little material left between the keyway and the hole. It would have worked a lot better if I had used a larger diameter piece. Also, the little arbor press that I got from -guess where- Harbor Freight, wasn't big enough so I had to hammer the shaft onto the motor. This slightly mushroomed the end of the shaft so my sprocket wouldn't go on nicely. Some filing took care of that though. The shaft cracked inside the keyway as well so I'm not too confident about its strength. This will probably have to do for San Fransisco because I'm running out of time and have run out of Jensens :-)

May 4, 2001:

Took apart the dewalt gearbox with the broken plastic gear again. I just popped the broken piece back and put the transmission back together. Planetary gears are cool! I think it should be fine as long as we don't try shifting gears. We've installed screws to hold it in place this time.
I also went to the local Black-And-Decker store and ordered a replacement gearbox, and an extra motor, gearbox, and spindle.
In welding class tonight, I made a weapon for the front of Chameleon but I'm not happy with how it turned out so I'm going to try another idea that should be more lethal :-) Sorry, no picture.

May 3, 2001:

First the Good News:

Chameleon moved under its own power tonight! We only used a 12V battery and only wired up one motor tonight but the test was a success....
Colin, an artist at Westwood, came over and started painting our armor plates. We're going to paint Nod and GDI logos over the background pattern that he is working on in the photo.

Now the Bad News:

Somehow, one of the plastic gears in the dewalt gearbox is now broken. I suspect it was broken when I first recieved these motors two months or so ago. When I unpacked them, one of the transmissions was upside down and all of the gears spilled out which I think broke this gear. Anyway, it is making a very disconcerting noise when we spin the motor now. We'll have to try to get replacements before the 20th.

May 3, 2001:

Finished the motor mounts - Added a bicycle inner tube around the motor to improve the clamping force, made the gearbox holder into a clamp, pressed the bearing in.
Assembled the drive axles with keys and set screws holding everything together.
Installed the wheels, axles, and drive sprockets

Installed drive chain linking the two wheels on a side together.
Layout of the motor mount placement and drive chains for the motors.

April 26, 2001:

We hit a milestone tonight, the dewalt drill motor mounts are nearly complete. There are a few small tasks remaining: find a suitable material to shim the motor clamp with, find a washer to retain the sprocket, press the bearing into the block that holds it and bolt the motors onto the robot!

April 23, 2001:

Tonight I worked on motor mounts for the drill motors. The first task was to enlarge the 1" hole for the spindle bearings out to 1.1". I did this using a drum sander in the drill press... Pretty tedious and boring but the holes are now pretty close to 1.1".
Next I turned my attention to the motor clamp. I first drilled two holes through each with a No.7 bit (this is the size to use if you are making a hole to be tapped with 1/4" threads). The blocks were then cut in half to form the two pieces for a motor clamp. The holes through the top half were enlarged to 1/4" and the holes in the bottom half were threaded with a 1/4-20 tap. A 2-1/2" cap screw is used to fasten the top half of the clamp to the bottom half. The clamp currently doesn't really grip the motor; I plan to use some rubber to make a tighter fit.

April 22, 2001:

Byon came over today with the initial prototype hardware for our custom controller. We are designing our own controller which will use the trainer port on a Futaba radio. Driving skill plays a huge part in winning battlebots matches so we are going to try to make our bot as easy to drive as possible. One picture shows the controller hardware which is reading several pots and using them to control the two servos. The other picture shows a quick console that we threw together to use during development. We need to add a throttle control to this console. The buttons are arcade buttons from Happ-Controls for that video game feel :-)
Some progress was made on the Dewalt motor mounts. We now have two 3"x3.75"x0.75" blocks of 6061 aluminum with 2.25" holes in them...

April 19, 2001:

Layout test, I hope there is enough clearance between the back of those dewalt motors and my chain once everything is put together.
More dewalt mounting experiments. By using a hole saw and then sanding the hole I was able to make 0.80" and 1.10" holes in 1/4" aluminum. Next step is to build the actual mounts out of the thicker material (3/4" for the motor and 3/8" for the front of the gearbox and 3/8" for the bearing).

April 18, 2001:

Cyndi picked up a bunch of raw materials today and some came in the mail. Shown in the picture are 1-1/2"x3/8" steel flat stock, 1" steel square tubing, 3/16" aluminum plate, 3/4"x3"x3' 6061 AL flat bar, bolts, etc.
Welded the top front cross piece to the frame, my welding seems to be getting better :-)

April 17, 2001:

Cut out cardboard templates for the side armor panels which will be made of 1 or 2 layers of 3/16" lexan.
Cut lexan panels using the previously mentioned jigsaw blade! The picture shows the lexan with its protective pastic still on.

April 17, 2001:

Welded steel "tabs" into the corners of the frame for the aluminum base-plate to bolt onto.
Drilled and tapped 1/4-20 threads into the steel "tabs".
Drilled and counter-sunk(?) matching holes in the aluminum plate.
Today I had to buy another tap to replace the piece of junk that came in the Harbor Freight tap and die set. Same problem as before; the harbor freight tap just would not cut. It took me about an hour to tap four holes before I gave up and went to bed last night. Bought a new tap and did the other four holes in about 5 minutes tonight...

April 15, 2001:

I Interfaced the Futaba Conquest to the Futaba 6XAS to confirm if it is possible to send simple PPM data into a PCM transmitter. It is not! The Futaba techs were also surprised to hear this. However, I have been assured that a Futaba 8UAPS can accept PPM control info and transmit it to a PCM receiver, so I'm returning the 6 and getting the 8.
Looking at the trainer output data on a scope, it is very clear that there is a difference between PPM and PCM data. PPM is on the left.

April 14, 2001:

Another task for today was to cut the piece of scrap aluminum down to the size I need for a base of the robot. Since I've never cut aluminum (or any kind of metal) with a jigsaw before, I went out to buy some blades. If you look at the enlarged photo, you can see why I chose these! Heh heh.

April 14, 2001:

Today I managed to attach a sprocket to the Dewalt spindle! I used the method that S.C. Tilford described in the forum. Basically you get the largest sprocket you can which still has a bore size of 3/8" (11 tooth), drill a 29/64" hole in it, and tap 1/2-20 threads through it. I was having no luck using the tap that came with my $8.00 super-cheap Harbor Freight tap-and-die set so I bought a tap from McFadden-Dale's which worked like a charm. Of course it cost as much as the entire set of SAE taps and dies from Harbor Freight.

April 13, 2001:

Used the hand grinder to grind off all of the "external" weld beads. Its pretty nice how when you grind off a weld you are left with what appears to be a single piece of metal.
Experimented with hole saws in blocks of Aluminum. The Dewalt motor+gearbox+spindle requires three hole sizes: 2.25", 1.10", 0.80" in order to mount properly. So far I can make slightly oversized holes for the motor (2.25") and slightly undersized holes for the other two. I ordered a boring head which should allow me to make arbitrarily sized holes...

April 6, 2001:

On friday night I finished nearly all of the welding for the frame. Lots of grinding left to do though! There were some problems; as I was welding, the whole thing deformed so we had to put several huge clamps on it to pull it back into the right shape while I finished welding.
I bolted the pillow blocks on and put the wheels on with test (non-keyed) axles to make these pictures. You can compare them with the 3dstudio renderings!
The next challenge is to figure out how to mount the Drill Motors...

April 5, 2001:

Finished cutting all of the tubing for the frame.
Finished drilling the 1/2" holes for the pillow blocks and spikes.
Made a jig and welded the two vertical structures in the frame.

April 2, 2001:

Ordered a 50 MHz Futaba 6XAS 6 channel PCM transmitter and a 9 channel PCM receiver from Tower Hobbies. Preliminary research on the trainer format on a Futaba Conquest FM transmitter appears usable. I hope the PCM is not much more complicated.

April 1, 2001:

Here is a picture of some of the structural pieces for the frame. The wheels and motors are laid out approximately where they will go too.
Some of the pieces already have 1/2" holes for the pillow block bolts. I've found that I can't just drill a 1/2" hole; I have to start with a pilot hole, then a larger bit, then finally finish with the 1/2" monster drill bit.
We're at 44lbs with most of the heavy stuff already taken into account... Can we make lightweight after all?

March 30, 2001:

My sister Ann and I did some welding to practice up before building the robot frame. Here we are building the top for a welding table. For this 1" square tubing we had the best luck by setting the miller 130 on a voltage of "1" (lowest setting) and wire speed of 30.

March 26, 2001:

Oh yeah! I can't wait to start building this thing! Here are two 3D-Studio Max renderings of the current design.
I contacted the supplier and our (huge) bearings should be here on Wednesday.
Ordered key-slotted shaft and key material from MSC-Direct.
Ordered 4 more QD hubs and some tools for working with chain from McMaster-Carr.

March 25, 2001:

Bought and assembled a drill press from Harbor Freight.
Mounted the 8" grinder on a stand.

March 20, 2001:

Ordered 10 pillow blocks and 4 flange mount bearings from Team Black Op Six www.blackopsix.com
Ordered arcade controls from HappControls www.happcontrols.com. They are moving to 6870 Paradise Rd on April 13! I'll have to visit when it is time to make a MAME cabinet.
50-7608-10 Joystick $6.99 x2
58-9611-L White competition pushbutton $1.55 x10
95-4009-00 Button ID tags $0.22 x10
Mailed off the battlebots entry forms!
Ordered sprockets, chain, and QD-hubs for the wheels from www.mcmaster.com

March 19, 2001:

www.arcadesticks.com order
20 for $19.99 - Special#1 Push Buttons With Horizontal Micro-Switch (white)
2 for $19.99 - Special#2 Ultimate Joystick 8-Way Micro-Switch (red,yellow)
$0.99 - Button Id Tags
E-Mail BOUNCED! ARRRGG!
Tools: Bought pliers, wrenches, cutting oil, punches, toolbox.
Worked on the battlebots entry form.
Made list of drivetrain parts to order.

March 17, 2001:

Bought welder, band saw, and PVC material for the control system
If you are going to buy a small MIG welder, get either this (the Miller 130) one or the Hobart.

March 16, 2001:

Tried out sawsall, not accurate enough to be useful
Put together the band saw!
Visited Bearing-Belt-and-Chain to get sprockets. Got good info, have to order the sprockets, will decide on shaft diameter and order pillow blocks at the same time...
Inquired about welder, Prax-Air has the Miller for around 500.

March 14, 2001:

Got all of the parts except the shifter wire for the drill motors.
Wired up a Jensen, RC Reciever, 12V gel cell, and Victor833 - worked!

March 6, 2001:

Initial tools and parts that we've aquired. On order are two Victor833s, 3 jensens, two 24V,110A relays, 2 24V Dewalt Hammerdrill motors!