In this particular case I chose to go with the new
Solarbotics 35:1
drive units because of there small size, light weight and good performance numbers. Get Flippen, the bot they are used in needs extra weight for armor due to the amount of fragile components that need protecting
so I needed a light alternative to the usual 24:1 BaneBot gear motors. The one odd thing about this motor is that the gearbox is offset with the motor which makes a simple flat mount rather hard to do without misaligning
something. I started out with 4 of the gear motors as seen above. You can also see the offset in the picture above.
I thought about many different mounting options to overcome the offset; an piece of 90deg angle, CNC a box type mount that would enclose the whole thing, and a motor clamp. But all of the previous ideas
would weigh to much, cost too much and take to long to build. So while eyeballing the motor I saw that the offset was not THAT much, just about 1/16” or so. SOOOO therefore if I were to glue something that is roughly 1/16”
thick to the bottom of the gearbox it would negate the offset! I happened to have a piece of 1/16” plastic lying around so I quickly cut it into shape and shoe goo’d it to the side of the gearbox
that the gears are
furthest away from the edge. Be very careful when gluing not to get any inside the gearbox. Only use a small amount at this point. You will use a lot more when you attach the unit into its final spot.
Apply a little goo to the front and back of the spacer plate and attach it to the gearbox, then use a clamp to hold it into place until it is dry.
While the motor spacers are drying you can make a set of neat-o small and light wheels that I also made from a Solarbotics product. You need to start with a set of the
Solarbotics RW2 wheels. Once you have the wheels take off the stock rubber tire and set aside for use in the future.
These are great wheels as they are, but on a bot such as Get Flippen where weight is tight the thick rubber wheel is a little too weighty. Now that you have the wheel off you will see a nice aluminum hub that has 2 deep groves in it that
are perfect for a set of double O ring wheels or even O ring tank treads should you so desire them. But again, due to weight I only need one O ring as a wheel so the other grove can get cut off.
Take the hub and cut off the furthest grove. You can do this with a dermal, hack saw, sander, and grinder, whatever you have. I took the hub, put it into a vise and then cut it off with a hack saw. Once I was finished with all of them I
gave them a ride on the belt sander to even the cut up and to make them look shiny. Then all you have to do is find some appropriate sized O ring and pop them into the groves. And presto you have a small, light, strong set of custom wheels
what get good traction! Look
Here here for some videos of them in action.
Now that you have the spacers all glued to the gearboxes and a brand new set of wheels go ahead and mount the whole thing to your robot. Make sure you mark out where you want the motors to go so everything is in correct alignment.
I chose to again use shoe goo to mount the units to my base plate. Shoe Goo is easy to work with, cheap, gives good support by filling in all the voids and can easily be replaced and fixed. Dab a generous amount of goo onto the motor and place it
onto the mounting point. Wiggle the motor around so that you get goo onto all areas of the motor. Again, make sure that you
DO NOT get any goo inside the gearbox! Then clamp the gearbox into place and leave it alone till its dry. When it is
dry, wire it up and take it for a test drive! See, that was not hard at all! Easy as pie!
