Hi,
I have a rover, powered by 1 motor at the back.
I need to develop some sort of steering system in order to turn this thing.
How would I go about making a steering system? Are there steering kits I can buy?
Thanks,
Redmug
The Tamiya gearboxes are not the fastest, but you can increase the speed slightly by changing the gear ratio to something lower. You may have also found turning to be difficult - this is because the wheelbase is so long that the wheels are being dragged sideways when turning on the spot - a much shorter wheel base would help a lot.
The motor+ESC combo you linked to is best suited to a high speed R/C vehicle which would still use gears after the motor (it’s rare that you would connect a wheel directly to the output shaft. The motor consumes 18A, so a 2.2Ah battery would last around 7 minutes before needing to be charged. If you want a high speed robot with rack and pinion steering, you would be best to simply hack a remote controlled car.
Most small robots don’t use rack and pinion steering (like a normal car). The vast majority use differential steering (like a tank) which requires only two motors. Can you provide an image of your rover?
I was just looking at one of the R/C Cars I have lying around, and it seems to have a very very simple steering system, I have attached the picture for you to look at. Do you have any idea what that plastic rod going from one end of the wheel to another would be called? If I can find out what this steering system is, I can possibly get someone to 3d print a scale model, or I may even be able to find a nicely sized one somewhere on the internet
Thanks,
Rohan
Hi,
I have attached an image of the rover, it is a little messy, its still in building phase, but you can see 2 gearboxes on either side of the chassis. I am taking those out as the size 130 motors being used need a gear ratio of like 113:1 to push the rover which is much too slow for my needs. With the setup in the picture I was using a differential drive system because I had 4 motors. I am now planning on switching to this motor.
That will also mean getting rid of the 2 dual motor controllers. Now that I am only using 1 motor, how would I come up with a steering system to steer this thing? I have looked online for various kits, but they all seem to be upgrades for existing R/C Cars. Buying 4 of those motors linked above is not an option either as it is pretty expensive just to have 1 of them, and in terms of battery power I am not sure 2200mah would keep it runnning for as long as I need it to run for.