Kilian's Robot Shop of Horrors - 02/22/2001

Subject: Robots last night.
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 21:23:33 -0600 (CST)
From: kilian@mail.ahc.umn.edu (Alan Kilian)

Brynn, Jeff, Ron and I had a good night last night.

It was all machining in the basement.

Jeff has some really nasty greasy idler wheels he got from the Ax-Man that have about a 1/2 Inch diameter hole in the middle.

He also had (of course) aluminum pulleys that fit his motor shafts.

We turned the outside of the pulleys to 0.51 Inches diameter, and pounded them into the idler wheels to make wheels that go onto his motors. The idler wheels have internal splines, so when we (Jeff) pounded the aluminum pulleys into the wheels, they fit nice and tight.

We also bored out two toothed belt pulleys so that they would fit onto his weed wacker engine output shaft. One goes on the engine, and a matching pully goes onto a large DC motor. He can power the motor up from a battery to start the weed wacker engine, and then switch over to using the motor as a generator. Things sure turned out nicely (Pun, Pun).

Then Brynn milled a small 1/4 Inch thick triangle with 1/8 inch slots along the edges and a hole in the middle that he will use to position his PIN photodiode for his LASER rangefinder. Oh, man it looked nice when he was finished. Just like downtown as they say.

It was the best night for machining I have had in a long time. It seemed like I couldn't make a hole straight there for a while.

Next week back to Friday evenings. Getting to bed at 3:00 AM sure makes money for the coffee shop the next day.

-Alan

Jeff's engine/generator project

A plastic pulley in the lathe with a boring bar for a tool.	Enlarging the hole.
Checking the fit.	Pulley mounted on engine.
Boring a smaller aluminum pulley.	The engine, batteries and motor on a pile of crap.
The motor connected directly to the engine shaft for starting demo.	Alan trying to destroy my tachometer.