Performed successful lobotomy of the giant servo!
Yesterday, we had seen that bidirectional control was possible through the serial controller. But there was still the issue of cutting the limiting stubs that prevented 360 degree rotation. We cut off both the stubs and re-assembled the motor…voila! 360 degree bidirectional DC motor without any custom electronics!…now isnt that neat.
Motor Lobotomy and reassembly
Completing the frame
Pretty soon we realized
that a horizontal half-and-half joint was not the best way to create the joints we needed.
| Gyan: Find a better angle joint mechanism. |
When we completed nailing all the joints, we anxiously put the spirit level on top of it to test how flat our frame was. It turned out the frame was completely flat!(much to our surprise and delight). We tried putting the test plank in various orientations to check level and all of it turned out to be flat.
Finishing the frame
Testing frame level
Wheels
The wheels are 15cm in diameter. The wheel has a plastic core around which there is a rubber tyre. The hole in the center of the tyre for the axle is nearly 1cm in diameter and the depth at center is 4cm. The shaft that came out of the motor is 0.5cm in diameter and 0.5cm long. The task was to couple the shaft to the wheel in a stable manner and ensure that the alignment of the wheel is not lost and neither is too much weight incident on the motor itself.
We attached the white circular plate that was provided with the motor to a garden valve. The garden valve had a flat circular plate with a long plastic screw coming out on one side. We attached the white plate to flat face of the valve and passed the long screw through the axle hole of the wheel. The winged nut of the valve fastened it to the wheel. This whole assembly was attached to the motor to give a sturdy wheel assembly.
Drilling into the white motor attachement
Preparing the wheel to motor coupling - white plate to garden valve!
