So that’s what an aluminum Tri-track looks like 
Nice.
Lots of CNC work still going on this project.
Photos 1 and 2 show ball bearing rollers for the tracks. The other 3 pictures show the center section progress.
Nice machining!
When do you put it all together?
Alan KM6VV
It’s coming along, piece by piece.
I’m hoping to have a little more progress made by the end of the week.The center section will rotate up carrying a camera which will stay horizontal with the main axis while it rotates. I plan to also have an over ride so the camera can tilt up and down.
More pictures to come!
Finally got the center section to move on it’s own!
The 3/8 shoulder bolt will get machined off once I machine a flange to mount the camera to.
The gear motor which moves the center section is 60:1 which is really too fast. I’ll be changing that to a 15:1 shortly.
Going to add a basic stamp and drivers soon. I’ve really gotta learn about the propeller!
Pray tell, do you have a specific objective with this latest creation?
I just want to see how far I can take the design. Kind of a test for myself. The upper cylinder will house a 600 line camera with a fisheye lens for a wide viewing angle. I’ll also add a Ping sensor for obstacle avoidance.
I may change to 3" wide tracks just because I think they look better on this bot.
Here’s a few more pictures.
Hi! I’ve been studying your project very closely the past two days! You’ve saved me lots of time in trial in error! Following from your suggestion for my problem with ride smoothness, these bearings - did you fabricate or buy these? Is there major benefits over using the nylon rollers & standoffs?
Very nice design. Really looking forward to seeing it all together.
The nylon rollers and standoffs in the Lynxmotion store work great. I just wanted to go the extra step.
I made the rollers myself. I used black delrin rod and turned it in a lathe. The bearings are small 1/4" x 3/8" flanged bearings. The rollers work very nicely.
I’m down to the electronics phase now. Note the small bracket around the center tube. That mounts a Hammond diecast box where the three motor drives and the Lipo battery will go. I’d like to give the cylinder that’s kind of the head, some character. Can anyone help me with some suggestions? See the picture.
Haha, nice. Just keeps getting better.
thank you sir - bushings and spacers order, much appreciated. Good luck with the character design, I tried to come up with something worth suggesting but its a tough shape of a face!
Battery box makes some progress!
I laser cut the acrylic plates to make the battery box a little deeper. It fixed several design issues by doing this. I can plug into all three drives now and make program changes without opening the box. The receiver hanging by the wires is temporary. I’ve ordered an EZ-B controller and the drives are 18/7 Pololu. The controller will let me control the robot from my iPad.
Robot is just about done. A Ping sensor and BS2 make up the electronics in the head. There’s a mini-usb plug on the side of the head to allow digital access to the BS2. I’ve added a Text to Speech board and now the robot powers up, lifts it’s head and announces it’s name. If someone gets to close, the female robot voice says “you’re getting to close”. If someone gets really close, < 3 inches the robot announces “you’re in my personal space” and lowers it’s head back down between the tracks. I have a short video I will post as soon as I figure out how to.
The side of the robot head has a space milled out for the speaker and the side of the StampDuino board I chose to use.
Next I’ll add some LEDs in the holes right under the Ping. I’m thinking of using an LM3915 bar graph chip to make the leds flash like the robot is talking as the text is played.
Nicely done. What is the total weight?
Wow! I love the mechanical work, very pro. Great design.
Would love to see a video of it one day! 8)
Must be one of the best track projects I’ve seen so far.
I added a sub plate to connect the two track halves together. I used a Hammond die cast box as the body. The box is just over 10x10 and 4" high so there’s lots of room for electronics inside. The servo arm was copied from a T-Hex leg and will have a gripper added when the UPS guy brings it. I purchased 7 HS-7950TH (ouch!) 400 + oz in servos so the arm would have some strength. Notice the 42mm planetary motors? Ah overkill!
I’ve already got the circuit working which drives the two tracks via a joystick through Xbees. The circuit also scans the Ping and reports obstacles in front of the robot back to my computer running Stamp Plot. There’s a compass that reports the bot direction back to my computer as well. I wish I could take credit for the circuit but I can’t. I copied it from another website. Now I have to figure out how to send the data for the arm positioning over the Xbees.
The last picture shows the new bot next to one I built for this purpose before I decided to build the 3" tracks. The 3" tracks are really nice.
More to come!
