More suspension work for Inspiration

I've been very busy trying out the suspension parts. First I got all of them printed.

Then an hour of freeing them all from the support material

Then I fit them all together with the wheels and springs in the shoulder parts.

Then I routed the wires through the tubes and fit the suspension on the body.

After getting the suspension on, I found that the springs were not strong enough to hold the weight of the rover so the body sank to the table and things were a little sloppy in the shoulder joint so the wheels slid out away from the body as well. 

 I tried tightening the springs but started to break the printed parts. I got some assistance from some guys at work and we decided to replace the plastic shaft in the shoulder with a metal rolling pin. Today I set to work on that and found it all fits really well! The bearing now fits better on the shaft but the spring still couldn't be wound up enough to provide good torque. A professor at school suggested torsion springs instead so I did the math for how much torque was needed from the spring and set to ordering them on McMaster. Hopefully that will work out. I'm also in the process of making an aluminum U shaped bracket to hold both sides of the suspension to each other for better rigidity. More to come next week. Off to the Tucson Gem Show for the weekend!