First Antweight (Name TBA)

[mathias]

I may have gotten a lead on some titanium to buy locally from another Makerspace member, but it's 1/8" sheet that's roughly 20x25" maybe I can make a really cool, burly "truss" frame :-)

[Lucas Grell]

That's a big sheet. I bought ~32x~6" 1/8" for my 15 pounder. How much does the guy want for it?

[mathias]

That's a big sheet. I bought ~32x~6" 1/8" for my 15 pounder. How much does the guy want for it?

The big sheet has some history, it was unused spare armor panel for a lightweight.

We looked at titaniumjoe.com and it looked like they were charging roughly $1 per sq.in. of 1/8" grade 5 sheet, but the grade of this alloy isn't known so that might not be the best number to start with. He offered to charge half that and sounds like he'll sell me just a piece of it.

I'm thinking that if I wanted to make 2 sets of frame rails for the wedge design I've been mocking up, I could get just a 6x8" piece and cut out 8 frame rails from that.

[Lucas Grell]

If it was armor, it was almost certainly grade 5. Not a bad price for sure, I spent ~$130 on that piece.

[mathias]

Looks like I'll be getting 6x20", just to keep from cutting it into notches, and that means I'll have a lot to play with! Should be a lot of fun.

Now to start looking into bits for the mill so I don't burn up used ones at the Makerspace.

[Lucas Grell]

If you pick up a few carbide ones and are careful with them, you'll have no issues. Coolant is basically a must; titanium transfers heat poorly and if it does heat up, it will cool and harden, and you'll have a very hard time cutting it.

[mathias]

Today, UPS brought me some HobbyKing goodies:

2x Park 300 motors
2x Plush 12a BESCs (heavily inspired by Algos here, as you can see)
A Orange R410X receiver
HobbyKing low-voltage alarm (for the Maker Faire kids-drive-it-all-day wedge)

Brushless motors are mostly to get an idea of how to hook them up, and to start thinking about what kind of spinning weapon system I'd like to build for the second generation antweight. I've got two of motor and BESC because I'll also be building a secret project for a friend with the other pair.

Sadly, my house has some plumbing issues that are going to eat up both the robot budget and my time over the next week or so, so probably not much progress until that's dealt with and the credit card recovers.