Articles in the 2023 category

  1. Development

    Since the initial trials with a Meccano chassis and some off-the-shelf RC car parts we've been working hard on development of the system. Most of the work over the last couple of months has been in modelling the robot using FreeCAD. Before I could start on modelling we needed to …

  2. Gearbox

    After the initial tests with the new motor it was clear we were going to need a better gearbox solution than my hastily constructed Meccano one. The Meccano gearbox worked for a test but there was significant wear on the brass gear teeth already and a sparkly layer of brass …

  3. Power Estimates

    One thing I couldn't find out about the motor we had bought was what it's power consumption was like. I have rigged up some parts of our 2022 PiWars robot on the Meccano chassis, that includes the Raspberry Pi and the power distribution board. One feature we hadn't used in …

  4. Getting Started

    As PiWars 2022 came to an end we'd decided we wouldn't carry on to the in person competition. There were lots of reasons; 2022 had been a tough year for free time with a bad job move and lots of events again. At EMFCamp we'd seen the Hacky Racers and …