I have done some work on the arms. I want them to be retractable meaning that Marvin can hide his arms inside the body when not needed.
The arms are powered by standard high power RC servoes bought at hobbyking. The should has 2 35kg RC servoes and the retraction is done with a standard
RC servo and a sliding rail.
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This robot has only one purpose so far, and that is to drive just one round around my block where i live.
I use the Ardupilot controller developed by www.diydrones.com.
The guys at diydrones really have done a nice work with this open source controller.
The wheels are normally used for a pram. they are cheap and really easy to adapt for a robot vehicle.
I used pulleys from RS components : 745-668, 744-952 and timing belts from RS : 474-5779
The base is strong and support my weight easily as seen.
I have mounted a 10″ touch monitor on the front of marvin for easy access to his software.
It’s an openframe monitor with resistive touch function.
I decided to use ordinary clay for ceramics to model the basic shape for the vacuum models. It’s cheap and easy to buy in the local hobby shop. It will only last as long as it is wet, and it is not re-useable but it doesn’t matter because i will only use the model once.
Basic model
Next step is to put on some layers of latex
Then i cut some cloth and covered the model with it and then again some latex covers.
I’ve installed 5 pcs. MAXSonar EZ1 sonars from wwww.maxbotix.com. The sonar have multible choices of output and
can replace the SRF04 sonar which is used in other Leaf robots.
They have a range of 15cm to 6,45meters which is very nice for such a small sonar.
I found this Imac 17″ 2.1Ghz dualcore with a defective panel. I thought that such a nice machine should not die like this and that is why i decided to rebuild me a Mac with the guts from this one.
Next step ,disassemble the imac 17″, -you will find plenty of videos on how to do that on youtube.
Every part inside the Imac is connected with nice long cables so you can rearrange everything very easy.
I did that and mounted everything on a 9mm white plywood 250*600mm with use of plastic spacers and plywoodscrews.
Here you see the Wlan antenna and the Bluetooth antenna, they also have long cables and can be placed away from big metalparts.
There is a buildin webcamera with mic which happens to be an USB camera. I have not yet desided what to do with it.
The only 3 cables i had to extend was the power ON cable and the 2 cables for the small integrated loudspeakers.
Next part was to make the white plastic cover . It’s mounted with only 4 screws , 2 in each side.
Here is some pics to se the difference.
Finally I added some perforated sheetmetal like the original Imac had in the bottom, but with larger holes.
The final result. It took aprox 8 hours from start to finish to make me a brand new Mac !
The robot is based on the free and opensource robot project Leaf.
The primary programming language is Lisp and C.
Usefull links:
This Vacuum forming is a very simple setup that could be improved in several ways.
I made everything in wood because its fast and easy to construct something in wood.
The oven is made of plywood and 6 pcs. ceramic IR heaters as used in professional vaccum forming machines. I have seen people using many different heating sources that is cheaper and could be as good as the heaters i have.
Each ceramic IR element is 200W /230V
The oven is mesuring 31*47cm, so its pretty small and easy handle.
The frame for holding the plastic is also made in wood.
I had one frame made in aluminium that was my first choice of material for the frame holding the plastic. It had the problem that it cooled the plastic to much at the sides, so i made one in wood instead with simple clamps to hold the plastic.
The frame take sheets of 33*50cm which is very practical mesures because the big sheets you get from the reseller is 100*200cm. Then i can easily cut the sheets up with minimum waste of material.
The vacuum table is also made in wood. Its a sandwich contruction made of to pieces plywood with a 3mm aluminium spacer profile inbetween to have a small champer to “distribute” the vacuum if you can say so.
Bottom view shows the plumbing that is glued together with PVC glue and silicone.
The tube fits together with a standard vacuum cleaner tube for easy connection.
The final setup on the floor vacuum cleaner at left, vacuum table in the middle and oven at right.
This is the power panel with Fuses and switches for Motorcontroller, Mini ITX board and the rest of the power consuming boards. I used white LEDs instead of green or red because i want to keep everything in white and black colors where possible.
