A maker's dilemma

 For the past couple of weeks I've been working on a prototype for the drive gear system. With the laser at The Hack Factory not cooperating (I'm told a really nice one will be in the shop some time in Sept.), I had to resort to some old school model making. I printed the outline of what I needed on a piece of paper and stuck it to a sheet of acrylic and cut out my pieces with a band saw. Then had to do some sanding but eventually I got this:

 All the pieces I need to put this gearbox together! So I started putting it together and filed the holes big enough for the bearings and motor and lined everything up. I was reluctant to actually glue everything together so I used some double sided tape and hot glue to produce this:

Then I added the motor and slapped on some wheels just to see if the gear system was strong enough for one to pull the whole thing along.

I started out with a simple test to see if it would even work. So I put it on a piece of tupperware and sent it the drive signal.

  And it actually worked! A bit louder than I thought it would be too. After this video it started to skip some teeth and sounded like the battery was going to die. I think the motor got warm enough to soften the hot glue I had holding it in place and caused it to move away from the gear that it was so perfectly meshing with. I also decided that the skipping wasn't horrible so it was time for a floor test. No video of this however since it didn't actually go anywhere. I didn't think it was necessary to glue the main gear onto the axle for the test so of course it slipped and there for did not turn the wheel. Oops..

 So with the battery sounding like it was going to die, I did some electrical testing. The battery was holding strong at 10 volts so I switched to measuring the amps and was a little shocked to see that the motor and gear system, along with the arduino boards, was drawing 750 mAhs. Sooo.. I figure with all six in place, my little 1600 mAh battery would last about 15 minutes at best. Judging by the sound of the motor, it would be far less. 

 I ended up ordering a couple of motors with their own gear reduction system on them. $15 a piece so not too bad. But they were 6 volt motors so I wasn't sure how they'd work.

 So my dilemma is that they do work! Very well actually! They're super quiet and total draw from this and the arduino boards is only about 150mAh! That's about 10mah from the motor! I could drive all day with all 6 of these hooked up. So I guess my dilemma is kind of a no brainer but I still feel like I put so much time and effort into that gear reduction system, it would be a shame not to use it. I guess we'll see how much power these little guys have once I figure out a way to mount them and attach the wheels. Perhaps tomorrow I'll rig up a quick attachment and see if the 2 motors I have will be powerful enough to move everything.

  Also, on the C++ side of things, I figured out pretty easily how to send information back from the Arduino so that I know I'm getting a good signal and also what command I sent it. I also tried some code so that I can control the speed of the motors as well. So by pressing numbers 1 thru 4, I can give it 4 different speed settings (or as many as I want I suppose).

 Hopefully by this weekend I'll get this thing moving and more motors ordered. I'm 4 months behind but finally I might have some real movement!