jstarne1
USA
Asked
— Edited
ANT is doing a great job getting the first proto of the XLR6 ready to send to me to start working on so for the sake of planning I would like to listen to the communities ideas for a rover kit and rover base. The EZ Robot kit is a great place to start so we aren't trying to replace Roli. This is for the next level kit , more ridiculous add ons can be made later. I will share some of what we have in mind so far. As always all our projects are being developed for use with ez robot Ezb v4 but you can still use a v3 in them.
Rover kit , that's a top and bottom to make the whole Xl rover
- misc parts like wheels
Rover base only, that's the bottom half of the Rover frame with wheels and a flat tray on top all molded from 80A shore urethane plastic
Thanks Steve ! I appreciate the positive feedback and support. This is made for the robotics community by the robotics community.
Playing with some size options here , the one to the right is a possible "mini" rover that would be more appropriate for 40mm Nema 17 motor sets.
Great job so far! We have learned alot about improving our designs after we actually printed and assembled a mockup. I am excited to see the next steps with your rover
@Josh ...... @Jason has a good idea with building a mock up! Cut out some high density Styrofoam or wood and get a good "visual" of the overall appearance etc!
One disadvantage of 3d modeling is you can spend hours drawing them realize things don't physically fit the way you want so to get the initial base / permanent measurements I'm building a mock up of the basics then once I have a physically compatible model I can input them into autodesk and it makes the rest of the design so much easier
Right now I'm making a mold of the NEMA 23 Stepper so i will have blanks for the whole physical mockup. I also have Nema 17 on the way for the mini rover mockup as well.
all holes on a part that we don't want rubber to enter must be sealed with clay. I filled 12 screw holes and the holes on each end of the shaft as well. Then a mold box is custom build around the part so that you don't waste material. The manufacturer says the parts typically only need 1/4 around the part but I gave a little more space because it's a thick cavity , about 2.2 inches thick and 4 inches tall.
next step , pour some rubber
I'm making this look very easy by leaving out some details. When making a mold you must first put the rubber in a vacuum to degass the liquid and then apply pressure while the mold cures forcing the rubber agianst the part. This picks up every detail of the part. In this case I was not concerned about detail for a pre design mockup. My professional vacuum setup arrives today. A mold takes 16 to 18 hours to cure under ideal conditions. I will demoed this evening and assuming me neglecting to degass and pressurize the mold didn't cause any issue I will cast a few duplicates. When i do the casting I will record it just to show how fast this process can be with the correct equipment.
Ok so i casted a dummy copy of nema 23 motor with 8.4 ounces of liquid plastic. The colors are from dye , i did a red one too playing around.
Here we are building the mold box for the Nema 17 40mm motor which is much smaller than the nema 23 big brother. So once this cures tommorow I will cast 6 nema 17 duplicates as well for the Zero Rover mini.
Here's 3 motor blanks lined up agianst the frame...