Week of 3/23 - 3/27

At the start of this week, I was finishing designing the cover part for the hexapod and scaling up to a size that looked best, but also fit the space where it needed to go. I designed it after a similar robot from a game I like, so I tried to make it look pretty accurate to the real thing. This led me to scale it to about 1.3 times the original size since it looked pretty weird when it was so small before.

This is the robot I modeled it after

With the legs in place, the cover looks pretty good, and I also hollowed it out so that it would be light as well as being a place for the electronics to go, so you wouldn't see them very much except for the bottom part I had to spend some time raising in it up though, since it was intersecing with the motors closest to it, but that got fixed eventually. Modeling something after something else with such a complex shape turns out to be pretty hard, but I think I did a pretty good job, and I also left a spot for a strip of red acrylic to simulate the light on it. I hope to print it out soon.

Also this week, I realized that the printer was set up for the 85a tpu, which I wanted to use to print out the endcaps for the feet of the robot that would grip the ground, but my shop teAcher suggested trying the less flexible tpu first. I tried it, and it messed up the inside, so I will need to simplify the part to make it easier to print.

Since I used the other TPU, the grip was almost non-existent, and the feet did not work very well with them attached, so I will definitley ty to use the other TPU next time, but it takes longer to set up, and there have apparently been some issues with printing parts with it, so I will look for other options. My shop teacher also suggested making a mold and using silicone instead, which might be a good idea.

Towards the end of the week, I also finished up the wires on the robot, since I had been putting them off while I worked on other things. I managed to wrap the remaining wires and crimp them, but it was just a lot of tedious work.