As you can see, I had to add like 15mm because I initially planned on flat pouch battery but switched to this cylindrical one. Switch from red to white is because I got a 2 for 1 deal on white PLA on prime day and am saving my red PLA for main rover.
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Half-assed hack of drive and passive wheel struts… measure the wheel/motor subassembly, capture dimensions on rough whiteboard sketch, CAD it up, print… hope to have mechanical assembly for this weekend.
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Can already tell wire harness will be a bitch to manage. Those 6 motor wires are kinda stiff and with wheel pivoting at contact point, wires will swing quite a bit. Enough slack for strain relief, not so much the wires snag.
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In main rover plan is to route the bulk of wires through hollow tubes.
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This whole process is a perfect illustration of the Lindblom "muddling through" process of successive limited comparisons. There's no "root" design, only progressive branching as you gradually lock in one design decision after the other. jstor.org/stable/973677
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This is a classic management paper (also a key reference for the neat little book, Obliquity, by John Kay) that I often recommend to clients, but for people/org management. But it applies to this solo engineering project too.
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Finishing up the mechanical design of ABTF with a pair of designs for a strut cap for motor strut, to hold motor in place. One is a hatch style that will screw on, and should work no problem, the other is a shoe style that I'm hoping will work without screws, interference fit.
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Hmm I suppose I could have printed this as one piece, with just a push-fit hole for the motor 🤔
There would have been an overhang, but I like the idea of a 2-piece assembly, not sure why. But will try single-piece design for NIM.
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Beginning test assembly of Accessory Before the Fact (ABTF). The Bill of Materiels (BoM) even for this simple test rover is 65 distinct parts (+ 4-8 more depending on what interconnect design I settle on to finish the wire harness 😫
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67 [+4-8] actually, miscounted
16 mechanical parts
36 fasteners (12 nut-bolt pairs, 12 screws)
6 motors
1 computer
1 battery
7 interconnect cables (not counting 4 integrated ones)
4-8 connectors, not shown.
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