Bits and pieces 2011-06-18
The postman arrived early this morning, with a cardboard box.
When opened, it was found to contain these bits, from the lovely chaps at Microkerf who have been amazingly tolerant and patient with our repeated requests for quotes and managed to laser-cut the aluminium parts in no time at all and speed the delivery to us (the chassis drawings were only finalised and the order placed on Thursday afternoon):
(Those of you with keen eyes might spot that the scissors, calipers, screwdriver and the wheel by the scissors are unlikely things to have arrived in the box today, and you’d be right.)
Andrew (who has done a great job with the technical drawings and design for the robots) leapt into action forthwith and has been assembling the robot over today so we now have something with a solid aluminium chassis! And wheels! And motors and battery boxes! He’s also been keeping a careful check on the robot’s weight, as I discovered this morning when I was attempting to weigh out some bulghur wheat to make some tabbouleh for lunch – my digital kitchen scales had disappeared.
This is the robot at the moment:
And this is the cat, who decided that he wanted to lie on the board and be photographed as well.
Eric will be coming over tomorrow for a day’s construction and testing, when the power boards will be soldered and the code for the compass sensor tested. (Once the top layers are on, the IR-sensor code will be tested).
Just over 2 weeks until we fly out to Turkey. It’s going to be tight, getting the robot completed in that time – but I think we’re going to make it.
The top layers for the robot should be arriving on Monday – these are being custom-cut from ABS by Pololu in the US, at crippling expense – and they will be used for mounting the IR-sensors.