October 2000

Tuesday 3^rd October 2000

I received a load of data sheets and diagrams from Superwinch showing the various ranges of motor winches they had. There was certainly a lot to choose from, and the power rating were considerably higher than I had seen with other motors. The only negative side was that most motors were not designed to be run continuously. They had to be given periods of rest between "on-periods", but this shouldn't be too much of a problem for the robot since the rounds are short, and I probably won't be running them at full speed for very long.

Wednesday 4^th October 2000

The go kart wheels from KR Karting finally arrived today. There were six of them instead of four that I was expecting, but this will give me a couple of spares, just in case. All the tyres were partly worn, but they should have enough life left in them for my purposes.

I put together a basic web site for the robot which I was going to call the Hassocks Hog. It was a humble beginning with a front page showing topic to be included in the future, and a page on my current sponsors. I also sent a request of the the official Robot Wars site asking if they would put a link to my site from their links page.

Friday 13^th October 2000

The official Robot Wars web site put a link to my site from their links page. I also noticed by looking at the "web tracking" reports that I was also getting links from the "dangerous machines" site that tracked all the robot sites. Currently I was in the top 20 for highest hits, but this was probably due to inquisitive surfers, and the fact I was identified on the site as a recently changed site. Time will tell if I maintain this position.

Monday 16^th October 2000

Chased up the batteries from Steatite and was told there was a delay in delivery, and the revised date was now 13th November. It's lucky I can manage without them for the moment!

Saturday 21^st October 2000

I tried to improve the motor controller by adding some extra circuitry and a DC DC converter to drive the MOSFETs more efficiently. Unfortunately it worked for just over a second before blowing the DC DC converter up. After a bit of digging through the data sheets, there was a vital bit of information missing that I needed to locate. I contacted the Farnell technical support desk who confirmed that I needed another type of DC DC converter to do the job I wanted, so I will have to wait until pay day to buy a new one. At £6.10 a shot for the converter, I don't want to blow any more up!