Assembly

Created assembly and added it to repo. The parts are arranged correctly and everything is in place as it should be. I also downgraded this to a tier 3 project as per @CAN's feedback. I will cover the difference, as I was able to get this far without funding.

Big Changes, Big Issues & Big Plans

The entire thing has dismantled. Seriously. Let me elaborate. When I last left off on this story, I was still discussing the fact that I was stuck on programming this sucker. Well, after another two days when I told myself, just one more try, just one more try, MAGIC. The motors suddenly locked up.

What this means.

This means that I have successfully told my motor controllers to turn on. Big whoop!

Seriously, this is what I couldn't get my motors to do for the past two weeks at this point. Now, they were awaiting commands, commands that were no longer hours to debug why it wasn't connecting, just commands that would work now that the communication was working. So I told them to spin in one circle while I held the bot in the air. They did that. I put it on the gound.

*crickets*

I heard nothing. The motors tuned out to either be too weak to actually tun the wheels or something much worse is happening (that to this that I don't know). I used much of my remaining time that day trying to get it to move. The next day, I continued, I brought it home, I did everything.

It. Wouldn't. Budge.

I read online that adding some code could make them stronger:

  driver1.setup(Serial1, SERIAL_BAUD, TMC2209::SERIAL_ADDRESS_0, UART_PIN, UART_PIN);  
  driver1.setRunCurrent(100);  
  driver1.setHoldCurrent(0);  
  driver1.setMicrostepsPerStep(1);       // full step for max torque  
  driver1.disableStealthChop();          // spreadCycle \= stronger torque  
  driver1.enable();  

Big mistake.

The thing started smoking as soon as I tuned it on, slowly at first, then pluming outwards. The robot had lost the magic smoke. We all know what that magic smoke means. Someone, on board, has died. Most of the time, only the factory can put said magic smoke back inside the components, and I know this truth.

Small issue: the components that burned out were the only steppers I had, which cost 60 dollars before tariffs but are now 120 dollars. I have a plan now to avoid this insane bill, but I still need the funding for this project. I have 2 motors that cost 40 dollars each and 2 drivers that sum to 40 dollars, about 120 in total. The new chassis requires a new roll of filament to make, but I got a spare. I'll leave you with this recreation:

OMG ITS PROGRAMMING, EVERYBODY RUN!!!

I normally love programming, but there's something about this particular project that just made it impossible. I don't know what was about these particular motor drivers, but I can't get them to even budge. Furthermore, I found a sneaky pin that I needed jumpers for, but even that didn't solve my problems. Sorry, no complete assembly because I dismantled it and want to save the recreation of it for my next post. This took the **majority of my time this week**, even during school, where I wrote potential interactions that I only hoped would work. Well, that was awful. I'd just sunk a whole week and a half into this thing, and I'm stumped. No Fires this time (1 nature — 1 me).

Here’s a photo of the madness at this time:

Innovation - Fabrication.

3D printing once again took a trip and soldering it a pain as always. I got the circuit back together, transferred bodies and put enough glue to make the gods envy it. To clear up any confusion between v3 and v4, v3 was when I added the bearing and nothing else. 4v came just after and was much more intense of a rebuild so that is what is here.

Gearboxes are impossible!

Sorry for having to say this again, they just take SEVERAL HOURS to assemble each and every time. I dislike this very much.

Innovation - The Butt. - 3 hr

Before, I didn't have any way for the car to drag itself along. This butt component allows me to add a Lego wheel and a few bearings to let the car glide seamlessly over the floor. I used layer designing for this, and it worked to an absolute charm, except for the fact that it was completely new to me and therefore took about 3 hours to perfect once I settled on an idea.

Innovation - The Battery Pack.

The battery pack that was initially made was too small for the pack once I actually added the batteries. There was no real other problem. I also added a cover so that way they can't fall out now. This took a bit to quite a bit of time in order to design.

Innovation - The Gearbox.

I dropped it on the floor and everything came out. Thus, I added a cover. Now, if it breaks, I won't know immediately (bad) and have the peace of mind that I haven't lost parts (good.) A couple of other things include the insane triple bearing design to try to take as much wight and distribute it as evenly as possible. (This is, and is still IMO valid madness) Each assembly took an hour and I did this a lot as I made changes.

Innovation - The Axel

This is a recount of what happened.

We're off to the races. I've got a basic setup and body, but there's something nagging at me, my bot, and my soul: getting it moving. I constructed the bot completely, top to bottom, complete with hot glue connections that would have outlived the sun. But it wasn't to be. Like all engineering endeavors, there was a laundry list of glaring issues, many of which I honestly thought I could ignore. Here, I think I'll do a picture by picture list of improvements that I made to my design (Hackclub Bluprint wants me to spit these up, so this post only includes the first one):

The Axels.

They look so thin and have just 3 mm of PLA Lego axel extrusion to hold them upright. Of course, they were going to snap. I added in some more joints and another 2 bearings onto the parts list, one for each side. Took about 4 hours to decide how to fix this and tear the bearings out of an old skateboard.

Fabrication & Fire

Took an hour or so of changing nozzles and filament + sticking. Came back and got the parts later. There were a few problems with this first batch. The most blaring is that the Axels repeatedly snapped. It was at some time at the 20-ish hour mark of this project when I started soldering my motor drivers and ESP32. This in of itself took two hours to find, set up, dismantle, and store. I was spending the next hour gluing the parts together when suddenly,

Sparks! Smoke! Panic!.

I don't have a photo of this but imagine ElectroBoom strumming his electric guitar. I discovered that a talent of mine that made this fire followed me here, complete idiocy. I had left the barreries in the capsule while I continued making other parts of the setup. Luckily, nothing was destroyed, but this made me realize the need for a switch. Jump to an hour later, where I am found dismantling an old electronic board from I don't even know what. It had a toggle switch rated for 3 amps, good enough for me. Here's a recreation of the state of the bot at the end of this. Sorry about this taking so much time, I'm juggling cleaning and teaching my brothers about electronics as I build this. Its part of a larger team event so there are also numerous hours of discussion not mentioned here.

Da Vinci v. Me / Praying for an X1

The printer broke like 4 times, at this point, and I tried to fix the sucker for over 2 days. (not included here for obvious reasons.) (da Vinci Jr. XYZ printer from the Cretaceous) Off to the library to use their X1. (Just to let you know, it printed like a charm.) Everything went smoothly.

Here’s what it's supposed to look like:


And mine:

Battery Pack

Battery container v1- 4 hours, I made this when I originally leaned blender to try it out, don't recommend for engineering models. I redesigned the model in Onshape after 4 hours of fooling around in blender. Keep in mind I still haven’t actually printed any of this.

Hardware

The gearbox took some hardware too. Most of this was scavenged from some old projects, skateboards, and even from an old 3d printer. These include bearings, some screws and the switch for the bot (not pictured.) This was a quick process all except for the hour and a half trip up to ace hardware form $6 of M2 screws.

Again, more Onshape yet

I continued to work on fleshing out this idea. I was gaining traction on how to use Onshape at this point.

Gearbox v1

4 hours again, multiple axis and offsets are hard for beginning users. I come from a background of blender and animation models, not CAD beyond Tinkercad. I used to build my projects purely off of blender and other files, but that is just impossible for me sometimes.

Continued development

Axel v1:

I continued uncovering how to use Onshape and came up with this design. When I first made it, I don’t know how I missed the glaring issue that the axle is so thin. This was updated in a later revision, but still. Additionally, this revision relied only on one bearing, something that I still don’t believe that I did.

Onshape!!

I began my development by creating a d-shaft to Lego axel connection. My plan was to use bevel gears from a Lego kit to translate the motion from the motors 90 degrees. I swear that my sketches are valid, but it just don’t care. I listed everything out but hack club wants me to spit it up, so here we go!

Motor Connection v1 (3 hours as I'm new to Onshape at this point):

Ideation, Shopping, and Physics

Old Recount - handwritten this time. (feels like walking into engineering English class)

This is to catch everyone up to the current state of things. I have mark one completed at this point but much to my dismay, it does not work. I have managed to burn it and can not afford any more components for the time being. Here's a quick recap of what happened.
Learned Onshape and created v1 (and technically v2, but that was small adjustments).

Shopping and Physics:

I ran some basic demos thing for my math. Look at what I have remaining from this step:
This translated to snooping around for parts shortly after, which is a headache to match steppers and motors.

Failure, Fatigue, and Fire

Old Recount

This is the final update to get you up to speed on this project. Finally But it isn't over.

The changes.

The whole thing is dismantled. Seriously. Let me elaborate. When I last left off on this story, I was still discussing the fact that I was stuck on programming this sucker. Well, after another two days when I told myself, just one more try, just one more try, MAGIC. The motors suddenly locked up.

What this means.

This means that I have successfully told my motor controllers to turn on. Big whoop!
Seriously, this is what I couldn't get my motors to do for the past two weeks at this point. Now, they were awaiting commands, commands that were no longer hours to debug why it wasn't connecting, just commands that would work now that the communication was working. So I told them to spin in one circle while I held the bot in the air. They did that. I put it on the gound.
crickets
I heard nothing. The motors tuned out to either be too weak to actually tun the wheels or something much worse is happening (that to this that I don't know). I used much of my remaining time that day trying to get it to move. The next day, I continued, I brought it home, I did everything.
It. Wouldn't. Budge.
I read online that adding some code could make them stronger:

  driver1.setup(Serial1, SERIAL_BAUD, TMC2209::SERIAL_ADDRESS_0, UART_PIN, UART_PIN);
  driver1.setRunCurrent(100);
  driver1.setHoldCurrent(0);
  driver1.setMicrostepsPerStep(1);       // full step for max torque
  driver1.disableStealthChop();          // spreadCycle = stronger torque
  driver1.enable();

Big mistake.

The thing started smoking as soon as I tuned it on, slowly at first, then pluming outwards. The robot had lost the magic smoke. We all know what that magic smoke means. Someone, on board, has died. Most of the time, only the factory can put said magic smoke back inside the components, and I know this truth.
Small issue: the components that burned out were the only steppers I had, which cost 60 dollars before tariffs but are now 120 dollars. I have a plan now to avoid this insane bill, but I still need the funding for this project. I have 2 motors that cost 40 dollars each and 2 drivers that sum to 40 dollars, about 120 in total. The new chassis requires a new roll of filament to make. Please help I'll leave you with this recreation:

Solving problems and innovation (v3 & v4 of inital design)

Old Recount

We're off to the races. I've got a basic setup and body, but there's something nagging at me, my bot, and my soul: getting it working. I constructed the bot completely, top to bottom, complete with hot glue connections that would have outlived the sun. But it wasn't to be. Like all engineering endeavors, there was a laundry list of glaring issues, many of which I honestly thought I could ignore. Here, I think I'll do a picture by picture list of improvements that I made to my design:

The Axels.

They look so thin and have just 3 mm of PLA Lego axel extrusion to hold them upright. Of course, they were going to snap. I added in some more joints and another 2 bearings onto the parts list, one for each side. Took about 4 hours to decide how to fix this and tear the bearings out of an old skateboard.

The Gearbox.

I dropped it on the floor and everything came out. Furthermore, I added a cover. Now, if it breaks, I won't know immediately (bad) and have the peace of mind that I haven't lost parts. (good) a couple of other things include the insane triple bearing design to try to take as much wight and distribute it as evenly as possible. (This is, and is still IMO valid madness) Each assembly took an hour and I did this a lot as I made changes.

The Battery Pack.

The battery pack that was initially made was too small for the pack once I actually added the batteries. There was no real other problem. I also added a cover so that way they can't fall out now. This took a bit to dseign.

The Butt.

Before, I didn't have any way for the car to drag itself along. This butt component allows me to add a Lego wheel and a few bearings to let the car glide seamlessly over the floor. I used layer designing for this, and it worked to an absolute charm, except for the fact that it was completely new to me and therefore took about 3 hours to perfect once I settled on an idea.

Fabrication.

3D printing once again took ages and soldering it a pain as always. I got the circuit back together, transferred bodies and put enough glue to make the gods envy it. To clear up any confusion between v3 and v4, v3 was when I added the bearing and nothing else. 4v came just after and was much more intense of a rebuild so that is what is here. ### Gearboxes are impossible! Sorry for having to say this again, they just take SEVERAL HOURS to assemble each and every time. I dislike this very much.

OMG ITS PROGRAMMING, EVERYBODY RUN!!!

I normally love programming, but there's something about this particular project that just made it impossible. I don't know what was about these particular motor drivers, but I can't get them to even budge. Furthermore, I found a sneaky pin that I needed jumpers for, but even that didn't solve my problems. Sorry, no complete assembly because I dismantled it and want to save the recreation of it for my next post. This took the majority of my time this week, even during school, where I wrote potential interactions that I only hoped would work. Well, that was awful. I'd just sunk a whole week and a half into this thing, and I'm stumped. No Fires this time (1 nature — 1 me)

Prototyping, routing, discovering, and lighting things fire.

Old Recount

This is to catch everyone up to the current state of things. I have mark one completed at this point but much to my dismay, it does not work. I have managed to burn it and can not afford any more components for the time being.

Here's a quick recap of what happened:

Learned on shape and created v1 (and technically v2, but that was small).

Shopping and Physics:

I ran some basic demos thing for my math. Look at what I have remaining from this step:
This translated to snooping arr round for parts shortly after, which is a headache to match steppers and motors.

Onshape & Blender!! Motor Connection v1 (3+ hours, I'm new to Onshape at this point): Axel v1 (1 hour, getting better):

Gearbox v2

(2 hours again, multiple axies and offsets are hard for begining):
The gearbox took some hardware too. Battery container v1 (4 hours, I used blender to try it out, don't reccommend):

Fabrication.

The printer broke like 4 times, at this point and I tried to fix the sucker for 6+ hours (not included here for obvious reasons.) (da Vinci Jr. XYZ printer from the cretaceous) Off to the library to use their X1. Continued in CAD. Took an hour or so of changing nozzles and filament + glusticking. There were a few problems with this first batch. The most blaring is that the Axels repeatedly snapped. It was at some time at the 17-ish hour mark of this project when I started soldering my motor drivers and ESP32. This in of itself took two hours to find, set up, dismantle, and store. I was spending the next hour-ish gluing the parts together when suddenly,
Sparks! Smoke! Panic!.
I don't have a photo of this but imagine ElectroBoom strumming his electric guitar. I discovered that a talent of mine that made this fire followed me here, complete idiocy. I had left the barreries in the capsule while I contined making other parts of the setup. Lickily, nothing was destroyed but this made me realize the need for a switch. Jump to an hour later where I am found dismantling an old electronic board from I don't even know what. It had a toggle switch rated for 3 amps, good enough for me. Stay tuned for part 2 of the catch up, we're only 4 days (only about 23 hours of which were on this project) into this mess at this point. Here's a recreation of the state of the bot at the end of this. Sorry about this taking so much time, I'm juggling cleaning and teaching my brothers about electronics as I build this. Its part of a larger team event so there are also numerous hours of discussion not mentioned here.