The chassis is coming together
quickly and is starting to
resemble the final product.
Fully operational and waiting on top armor.
Mechanical assembly.
along with the X spline shafts and
bushings in the outer rails.
A combination of sprockets,
shaft collars, and washers were
added to the shafts to position the
7075 aluminum sprockets in
alignment with the wheel and
weapon sprockets.
After alignment was completed,
it was time to add roller chain and
wrap up the mechanical assembly. I
wrapped the individual sprocket
segments in roller chain to
determine where I needed to break
the chain and used a commercial
chain breaker to split the segments.
Once this was completed, each
chain was wrapped around the
corresponding sprocket set and
master links were added to keep the
ends together.
and the main axle was slid into the
assembly. The outer bearing blocks
were slid on and the front armor
plate was bolted to the blocks.
With a bit of sanding and
hammering, the side panels were
coaxed onto the front and rear
armor panels which were quickly
fastened together. The remaining
hex standoffs were added, followed
by the baseplate which had
mistakenly been modeled with
0.250” holes for all of the 1/4-20
bolts. The snug fit was worked
around and the CAD drawings were
corrected.
Thursday
This was the dirtiest day of the
build. The wheels and outer rails
were added first, with washers
being used to position the wheel
sprockets at safe distances from the
frame rails. The next parts to go in
were the three 18V De Walt
PowerDrive Kits from
www.robotmarketplace.com,
Saturday
After taking Friday off, it was
time to tackle the electronics
section. The wiring in Nyx is fairly
simple. Each motor is controlled by
a Holmes Hobby BR-XL speed
controller; they all run to common
leads — the positive to a Team
Whyachi MS-01 switch I had left over
from an old robot, and the negative
to the negative lead of the battery
plug. The power leads connect to a
34 SERVO 04.2012
