Milling.. sort of

Something actually happened robot wise, several somethings in fact, which is a nice change. Ellis decided to grace my presence with a visit in which we talked a lot of shit and did a small amount of robot poking. We would have done more but some tit decided to leave the tires for the wheels in Essex or some such place. At least its gone from the parts for the wheels being spread across two countries to being spread across one. Yay geography.

The wheels themselves are rather brilliant I must say, lovely finish  and they are all within 0.2mm of size.

Ok so I don't need 8 but I want 8, so there! The spares will be handy with my ability to design robots without armour or wheel guards or speed or manoeuvrability etc.

Well I got Massacre roughly layed out to just check if the CAD had errors that I'd missed. Just drew the base roughly on some chopping board in marker pen; it will be hardox for the real thing but not as thick. Damn this thing is tiny... But at the same time it feels quite big? What is this magic? Ah well too late to monkey around with the design any more. It's a bit too late for that. I'll get the aluminium for the frame ordered early February probably. 

Also,  NEW TOYS. Ahem. Mill happened and gosh darn it it's pretty. Not all bells and whistles but its a very very nice machine and I will love it forever, promise. Took a few days to get set up due to college getting in the way (engineering getting in the way of machining)

Spent a bit of time cleaning and generally poking the machine to check levels of niceness. It runs very smooth and is increadibly quiet. Yet to do anything precise with it yet as I don't have a dial indicator and other related items.

With no real devices to ensure any kind of accuracy I forged on ahead just to make some chips and actually make something. These are just some trial beetle bulkhead for a drum/beater. 4wd with two motors and belt driven wheels. Frame uses slots to hold itself together and has a little pocket because I wanted to see how that would go. 

Yay, its looks like what it is supposed to look like!

This was really very fun to make, I'm enjoying the mill so much and I don't even know what I'm doing. 

The machine blows through nylon and HDPE, although I much prefer working with nylon at this stage. Being slightly harder has its advantages. For reference, the black bit is HDPE and the bluey green is nylon. Commence picspam!

 Cheers, Haz.