Freaking sweet! These are the pics i have long awaited to see
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<Patrician|Away> what does your robot do, sam
<bovril> it collects data about the surrounding environment, then discards it and drives into walls

Lookin pretty pro Much bigger than i was expecting too. Sweet!

Exciting times indeed
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Okay, Just to keep everyone informed , the redesign is all drafted up and measurements made. I wont go into all the details because so much will change vs how it is now, but ill give a brief run down of the main parts. Construction begins on Tuesday.

The New main additions - there are plenty more but these are just the major changes:

- Full frame work around the top that will hold it all together essentially
- A solid roof with proper lighting
- Wall bumpers now sit below the floor level
- Polycarb sits all the way down below the bumpers and is held in with more tabs at the bottom. Before it was flush with the top of the wood.
- The strips in the middle that clamped the polycarb will have spacers so the polycarb can slide up and down properly (as proper as it will ever get at least lol )
- support legs in the middle of the panels and the center of the arena with adjustable height feet for leveling.

This is it fully assembled in its current iteration:



And the render (not totally complete here)



The bumpers sit below the floor, so its a wedge happy environment As a result of the floor sitting farther inward, some tabs will need to be welded onto the edges as shown in the 2nd pic to support the floor. The original wood didnt reach the edges anyway, so it works out well!




The polycarb will sit lower, all the way down now and behind the wood bumper. This is more a safety thing than anything else, the polycarb sitting flush with the top of the bumper before could have let something through the gap. More tabs weld onto that bottom railing to support the polycarb and stop it bowing out which was a problem before.



Consequently the arena will sit a bit lower, the roof beam will sit about 10mm lower than the polycarb. But with adjustable feet we can jack it up a bit. Mum shown for scale



I've already done quite a bit with what you see here (making it all fit together) So progress is happening

Build days will happen here every weekend till the event unless otherwise stated, so if you have some spare time, a good welder and a grinder come round and help! Free coke and lunch in exchange for back breaking labour ;P
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http://www.youtube.com/user/HyzerGlen - Videoooozzz

-$143 worth of steel for the rebuild, got a pretty good deal. it was $10 cheaper with cutting included than mascot steel quoted for material alone.



Time to cut n weld from tommorow *please don't rain* lol
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quote:

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Originally posted by Glen:
-$143 worth of steel for the rebuild, got a pretty good deal. it was $10 cheaper with cutting included than mascot steel quoted for material alone.

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quote:

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Originally posted by dyrodium:

quote:

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Originally posted by Glen:
-$143 worth of steel for the rebuild, got a pretty good deal. it was $10 cheaper with cutting included than mascot steel quoted for material alone.

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Pffs, you're just terrible at pulling the 'I'm a poor little student' look.
Lookin forward to seeing how you rework it!

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Rain somewhat thwarted most of today's efforts, but i did get the tabs welded to one "quarter"

The horizontal tabs hold the floor and the vertical ones hold the polycarb Some creative jigging means each quarter only takes about 20 minutes to do. So when it stops raining and i have more welding rods The rest will be done in the space of a day



Next item after thats done is finish the CADs for the roof beam end caps and get those done super ASAP and start working on some legs with adjustable feet. If anyone wants to help with the last item i have more than enough work for you this weekend (hint hint )
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Right, tabs are all welded, the floor sits on them just fine so happy days!



Today i started on the legs. There will be some 30x30 box section stubs welded onto the middle of the horizontal bits, and then the longer length of box section will slide over those. and possibly be bolted if it needs it (doubt it)

Also had a shop around for adjustable feet. The commercial ones all looked rather chinky and low quality. Plus at $4 a pop for the crappest of them all i reckon making them will be better.



So these steel disks will do the job at $20 for the lot. Going to weld a countersunk bolt onto the back and a nut on the front and that will make an adjustable foot along with a nut and plate in the base of the leg.

BUILD DAY

18th and 19th Febuary. I'll be needing some tools and skills such as -

* wood cutting items (router / circ saw) to trim the wooden floor and roof to size
* grinders with flap wheels and wire brushes to de rust the arena and prep it for painting
* someone to pick up the remaining polycarb / floor mdf / lights from Angus' house.

Really cant finish it unless i get some help with those Anyway, thats it for now
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I can do the 19th, maybe the 18th after lunch. The van is the obvious choice to get the parts from Angus's place and I have all the required wood working tools and more. What size are the MDF panels?

Epic progress glen, keep it up!
Everyone else, help out glen!
EDIT: Apologies in advance for me not being around, gotta take a holiday some stage before uni's insane schedule kicks in... now was the time. But my family will be MORE than happy to help liberate the arena from the house.

Well that's a convenient excuse Angus, IF THAT EVEN IS YOUR REAL NAME 8( but not to fear! I've already penned you down for the most back breaking tasks when you return for putting me through this hell XD!

19th could work, I have a friends 21st on the 18th but ill ride back in time for an afternoon build if anyone can do that.

The MDF panels are 1.2 square for all of them, roof and floor. The roof should be sweet but the floor just needs to be trimmed a little to suit the arena as it stands, as it turns out cadded size and actual as it stands bolted together size are completely different! whoda thunk lol. Will only need to remove about 10-15mm from two sides of the panels to make it all fit nicely.

Plus i reckon we will need to redo the bumpers so a chop saw would be great. Perhaps i can even throw a wood blade on my abrasive chop saw for that.

Anyway, progress. Horrible week weather wise that's completely screwing with any attempt to do work. But getting the grinding and cutting done in the day and the welding done at night when the rain stops is the go.

Two things I'm working on today and tommorow. First is the adjustable feet which gives us about 20mm of adjustment to get it all level and jacks the arena up about 60-70mm, which is good given the roof is lower.

Disks were drilled and countersunk and the bolts placed through the middle to be welded. Turns out the countersunk bolts are bigger than the countersinking tool that i got, which meant the heads protruded out. That is A-class bullshit considering i got the countersink just for that purpose and its labelled as up to m8. UNHAPPY JAN.

None the less i lathed the top of the countersunks down and welded it all together. The left disk is the bolt welded on, the middle is the nut welded on (so we can adjust the level when there is weight bearing down on the foot) and the right is the complete thing once ive ground the weld down.



taddaa



I'm not 100% sure if they will work that well, but we can always implement something more substantial next time if we need to. This lot only cost $20 anyway.

Also started on the extra 5 legs to be added. The plan is to have this 30 square box section welded to the bottom of the pieces, and some 35 square box will slide over it to form the leg itself. Hopefully i wont need to bolt it on. We will see.

Also managed to weld a bolt into the tube so assembly should be easier. Ill probably do this to a few of the bolts that are real bastards to get in



That's all for today anyway. Next task is to finish up the legs and the beams really need to get done super asap. Better cad the bits i need up! x.x
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I have a proper sliding mitre saw to cut the bumpers and if you want to make them really neat, I can also bring along a thicknesser that will produce a nice dressed surface on the wood.

It sounds like there is more than a full weekend's work; how are you placed for the following weekend?

Mkay, well the rain is still thwarting any attempt to be constructive, but plowing on, the 9 legs are done. I won't go into the embarrassment that may have occured when i bought all this RHS steel and realised it was too heavy to take back on the bike. Optimism is supposed to be an attribute dammit! DX

I ended up putting the nuts on the outside of the legs though so they can be replaced if they strip out somehow.



Though with that, We've used the remaining money from serial space, So we will have to dip into the club money to get the remainder of it finished. I can't see it being more than $100-200 even if we have to pay full price for the wood. Hopefully Chris can sort us out there

Next Jobs -

1) Get polycarb, lights and MDF floor from Angus' to my place (sometime before or during the 18th-19th if possible)

2) Complete roof metalwork (Ill do that sometime next week)

3) Obtain new wooden bumpers as the old ones are too short and cut them to size. This should be a 10 minute trivial job with Nicks miter saw, we can put 45 degree bevels on the ends then to make it all join together sweet as.

4) Cut floor to size once we have all the panels. Is this something that could be done at my place with a hand held circular saw or would we need to get it to Nicks place and run it over the table saw?

5) Get the roof wood

6) de rust and paint. I'm open for discussion here as to whether perhaps we should just store the de-rusted arena inside until the event and then look into getting it all powder coated afterward maybe. Or just DIY paint it. Forgive me for being pessimistic over the latter given my painting ability lol.

Ill post more deets on what will need doing in the state section then when I'm a bit more certain, as always things crop up during construction lol. But if anyones free on the 18th -19th ill defo have work for you. If not then no doubt the next weekend there should be stuff that needs doing

Anyway. Need to fix my robot now. Its almost a relief to get back to it XD
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http://www.youtube.com/user/HyzerGlen - Videoooozzz

1) I can pick up the parts from Angus this Sat/Sunday afternoon or Sat 18th - let me know the best day and time for someone to be home there.

3) I work just down the road from Bunnings, so I can pick up the wood as soon as I know the dimensions.

4) It would probably be better to cut the panels at your place, unless we can mark them out really accurately before taking them to my panel saw. I have a good hand held saw that just needs a steady table to rest the panels on. BTW: how large are the floor panels?

6) I can probably get the roof wood if I can have a buying list

It sounds like we are not having a build day this weekend - I can do most of this Sunday if we have enough material to get started - let me know...

Not much point in a build meet this weekend, The rest of the arena kinda hinges on the roof frame being done, which it isn't, and its too wobbly as it stands to measure anything accurately so next weekend it is

Ill grab the dimensions of the wood bumpers tommorow for you, Best to get them oversized and we will cut them to fit in snug i reckon. Instead of 8x 1.2m long bits that it uses now we may as we'll just get them at 2.4M single solid lengths. The roof beams are 2.4m anyway.

If you can get the wood/polycarb on the 18th that would be FANTASTIC. I'll organise it with Angus and drop you a PM through the week

With the roof panels, I'll wait till the framework is done before making the final call on that, but it will either be 4mm plywood with some timbers bracing it or just 4x 1.2m square 10mm MDF panels sat on the welded "tabs" as such -



Ive sat the floor panel i have which is the same dimension as stated between two tables as it would be in the design, and it doesn't sag. so i reckon mdf will be the go.

Ill ask Chris about getting the roof MDF first though I imagine that much of it will be quite $$ otherwise.
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