Fun outside!!

 This past week I have been incredibly busy getting Inspiration rolling. I cut the aluminum tube down to length and fit it to a U shaped piece of aluminum which will serve as the load bearing part for the body and all of it's components. I then figured out where I wanted the grooves for the retaining rings to go. Putting these grooves in turned into a fairly odd way of machining. 

Since I didn't have a lathe handy, I used the next best thing.. a drill press. With a good sharp eye and extremely steady hands, I took a small saw with a .030 blade and held it up to the aluminum tube where I wanted the grooves cut. It actually worked surprisingly well and the .025 thick retaining rings fit in perfectly.

After I got the tube cut and the chassis put together, I took a few pictures of it sitting next to the, now too small, body and then another with a wheel up on it showing the amazing capabilities of Don Bickler's rocker-bogie suspension system.

Once I got it all wired up, I just had to get it outside to do some "victory doughnuts"

 It was really nice to finally get it outside in the dirt since the entire time I've been working on this suspension, there has been at least a foot of snow on the ground. There was one issue though with turning around on higher traction surfaces. You'll see in the video how one wheel comes up off the ground. If I continue rotating, the entire suspension side will roll over on the tube and leave the rover kind of laying on its side. So while I've been thinking about how to fix this problem, I started work on the new body.

 I went down to the Hack Factory and used their laser cutter to produce some nice accurate cuts and holes for all the wires and screws.

Once I put all the cut pieces together, I mounted the body to the aluminum U with some screws so now the body can be easily separated from the chassis by turning out 4 screws. Here's a couple pics with most of the electronics inside:

 This weekend, I set to work on the metal detector arm and reprogramming the speed of the wheels while turning which seems to solve the rolling-over-suspension problem. And just a few hours ago, I finished wiring up one side of the rover so now if I needed to take an arm off for some reason, I just unplug the wires and pull the retaining clip and the whole suspension arm will slide off. A nice modular design just in case I end up designing another system, it can be easily swapped or if I needed to replace a motor, it will make it that much easier. 

 Next up is wiring the other side and finish the metal detector arm. I also have some more wire harnesses to add to the camera system and the battery.