Hope to see everyone at the club meeting this Saturday. We will start at 10 am as usual. Please bring any projects, and your laptops. We need to finalize our plans for the Oklahoma State Fair which is in 5 weeks!
Club Meeting Update
Calibrating the IR rangefinder
We had a small but good meeting on July 17th. It was great to have Keith from North Carolina visit with us, and our newest member, Johnny is driving all the way from Stillwater to meet with us. Johnny brought two projects with him to show us. The tracked platform may end up coming to the State Fair with us. We set up a calibration jig for our Sharp IR range finding module, and created a spreadsheet to plot the output. It is not linear at all and requires a third order equation to describe the curve. The next step is to connect it to an A/D and see if we can calculate valid range data from it. Thanks to everyone who came out, and I hope to have a larger turnout next month as we really need to get ready for the State Fair on September 28th.
GPS Enabled Car
Track Platform
Next Meeting on August 21st
We will be meeting from 10AM till 2PM to continue work on the bot for the SparkFun Challenge. We also need to prepare for the exhibit at the State Fair on September 28th.
Oklahoma Robotics @ Deluxe Indie Craft Show
This was our first year at the Deluxe show and it was a ton of fun! We brought out all kinds of stuff, including a portable light painting booth, the RC mower, Beetle and Brush Bots, line following robot, and CNC router table. Here are a few videos that show that the OK Robotic guys arguably had the most fun…..
The Date for the OPEN HOUSE is set!!!
The date for the open house is set for January 17th. Come and go from 10 AM – 10 PM. There will be snacks and giveaways and a few other fun things along with the technical stuff.
We’ll be demonstrating large and small CNC routers, TIG welding, Metal Casting, Microcontroller Programming, etc. Hopefully the RC Mower will be up and running as well! If weather permits, we’ll try to set up a small wind turbine.
Don’t forget, bring your laptops and enjoy the open WI-FI! If you have a project you’re working on or have completed, bring it along and show it off!
We look forward to having you all come and have a great time!
Directions are listed under LOCATION in the menu.
Upcoming Open House
We’re just about ready to have a open house for the shop and new lab for OK Robotics. Place your vote for the best date for us to have the open house. We will update our Google calendar when we’ve decided on the final date and time.
Members and non-members are welcome to send us an e-mail with questions or comments about setting up the open house. Be sure to also request being included on our calendar updates and receive e-mails on our upcoming events. If you have iGoogle, simply add our events to your calendar.
More details to follow…… hope to see you there!
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EV status update.
The parts are in from the machine shop, and are looking very promising. We have designed a coupling that connects the electric motor directly to the manual transmission, eliminating the need for the clutch. We are all anxious to know how easy it is going to be to shift without the clutch, but research indicates that it should not be a problem.
I have test fitted the adaptor plates and the coupling onto the motor, and tomorrow, I hope to purchase the bolts to put everything together. It is an important safety consideration that all of the hardware be grade 8 or better. These parts will be under tremendous stress that could potentially shear off soft hardware.
Start of the EV Conversion Project
Nathan Parrow, founding member of the OK Robotics Association, is teaming up with CEO of Helios Electric, Darius Tarsio, in a combined EV Conversion. This weekend the conversion project left the planning stages and the guys are getting their hands greasy and pulling the donor car apart!
The overall plan is to take an Acura Integra and remove the gas engine and convert it so that it runs on an electric motor powered by batteries. There have been other conversions like this, but in the end I think the combined effort and skills of both men will produce a high-quality and somewhat unique EV.
Part of the design of the conversion included work in CAD, Solid Works, and getting a large CNC fired up and ready to go. The following video shows the CNC in action cutting out a horse shape from a string of commands from a PC. The next steps in the project will envolve using the CNC to cut prototypes and any other custom parts needed for the project.
Working Mill Table
It still is a little rough, but the basics of the CNC mill table is running!
Pinout of the Bescor head
Lead wires (sense lines-pan)
white = common
yellow + orange 0° left + 0° right
gray = 90° black
blue = 30° black
purple = 60° black
green = 30° white
brown = 60° white
red = 90° white
Motor Lines
yellow + orange = tilt
green + blue = pan
red + black = power
Sense Lines Tilt
white = common
yellow (long) = tilt back
green = tilt forward
Other
black = serial from computer
orange = serial from computer
green = ground
