Team MedBots

[Max]

T-slot cutter does sound like the way to go, I'm trying to see if I can find someone with a milling machine I can borrow.

Has anyone had any success with using cheap AVR programmers to hack the TZ85As? (Such as this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/ulk/itm/252087015960 ) The polulu one is pretty expensive and kinda defeats the point of hacking them yourself.

[overkill]

How about the programmer from Hobbyking? http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...rSearch=usbasp

Its dirt cheap but only available from the international HK warehouse.

[Eventorizon]

A tangent but still on subject, the above issue of assembling a drum weapon is one of the reasons I opted for a whisk on C3. Much easier to make and maintain (provided you design it right first time round!)
If you are set on a drum, look at 360's thread to see how Mouldy did the drum assembly on 720 and 722. Its one of the best example out there.
Alternatively you could do what Jamie did for Drumroll, but that had the flaw of welding the teeth on weakened the Hardox.

[overkill]

+1 for the whisk!

You could also look at the drum design on the Touro line of bots. They are bolted on (which I don't like) but I don't recall ever seeing their teeth break off.

[RogueTwoRobots]

Don't think the welding affected the teeth on mine too much to be honest. Was just a combination of tooth shape and a 26,000rpm impact between two hard metals.

[Max]

Thanks Nick, the HobbyKing one will do perfectly.

Looking at the various versions of Touro they have used a variety of methods, welded teeth, bolted, what looks like a single piece machined snail drum, and an interesting design with essentially a flat eggbeater with two halves of an aluminium billet bolted on either side effectively making a drum.

[Mouldy]

Can recomend the T slots.... many huge hits and not a sign of failure yet.

Touro went from bolted teeth, to T slots, to dove-tail to snail drum... dove tail is best IMO but makes making the teeth harder

[Max]

Right, I've got my TZ85As and hobbyking USBasp programmer, I've installed Atmel studio 7 and downloaded and installed a driver for the USBasp (from here: http://www.fischl.de/usbasp/). I've done all my soldering and all looks good. I'm trying to add a target in Atmel studio but nothing is listed under ports, I've been into device manager and can see the USBasp and it says it is working correctly, but even in device manager it is not listed under ports but under 'Atmel USB Devices'. Can anyone work out what I'm doing wrong?

[cavecrusher]

The easiest solution i found was just using the kk multicopter flash tool, it is more than capable in flashing the tx85a with the hex-file.

[Max]

Ah fantastic, that looks much easier.
For the board do I just put "atmega-8-based brushless esc (flash)"?

Edit: and did you have to power up the esc from a battery?

[shakesc]

If you are keen have a read through http://www.robowars.org/forum/viewto...er=asc&start=0

[Max]

Both escs flashed!
In case anyone else attempts the same I used the kkMulticopter flash tool which was incredibly easy to use, and the key to getting it working was using Zadig (http://zadig.akeo.ie/) to install the correct driver for the USBasp, and when installing the driver I had to select "libusb-win32 (v1.2.6.0)" as the driver. initially I chose the wrong driver and it would not work.
Another top tip that I only spotted after doing the first esc, there is no need to remove the heatsink, just leave it stuck on.

[Max]

Ok, continuing the theme of nothings ever as easy as it seems:
I've gotta to switch out the broken motors on my Gimsons to new ones but the new ones I've got have the smaller gear on them. Anyone got any advice on switching the gears from one motor to the other? Should I rely on the interference fit or use superglue? Is there a better way than brute force to get the gear off/back on?

[Max]

Got the gear off the broken motor by heating the gear up with a blow torch, but in the process all the oil/grease in the motor bearings boiled out and caught fire. So don't think it would be great idea to do that to my healthy motor to get it's pinion off. Anyone got any suggestions?

[overkill]

The textbook way is to use a gear puller.



The hobby ones for that size pinion generally suck but do work if you are careful. They are available at many R/C stores and Hobbyking. The one from HK looks better than most.