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I came up with a design for a way to do all my downgearing 64:1 by way of pulleys that is so downscaled that it can fit onto the top of the 2430 motor and achieve the full 64:1 downgearing for BOTH directions of travel.

Here's a photo of the design drawing I made which roughly approximates what this will look like in theory:


Here's a closeup detail photo of one of the pulley downgearing stations pictured above:


Here is a photo of a thumb tack and #3 fishing crimp sleeve I bought on Amazon which will act as the basis for the downgearing pulley station:


Note: what an IMMACULATE FIT this was! I was looking through my junk bags for a sleeve for my thumb tack and nothing was a snug fit but when THIS came in the mail for the unrelated fix I mentioned earlier for the other pulley system, I knew it was perfect for the thumb tack when I saw it! It's the perfect plain bearing!


So the 64:1 downgearing system will start with two fishing lines (0.08mm in diameter 6lb test braided PE fishing line) wrapped onto the output shaft of the BLDC motor in reverse directions - one clockwise and the other counter clockwise. These strings will then travel to each of 6 downgearing stations that will each double the previous torque achieved. So downgearing station 1 will double both of the string's torque and downgearing station #2 will double that bringing the total torque to 4:1 torque. Station 3 - 8:1 torque, station 4 - 16:1 torque, station 5 32:1 torque, station 6 64:1 torque. Each station is made up of a stainless steel thumb tack with a #3 fishing crimp sleeve placed over the tack shaft forming a plain bearing pulley system. Little plastic discs will separate the various sections of this pulley system up. The discs plastic will be strawberry containers clear plastic from the grocery store (same as they use for lots of fruits, cakes, deserts, etc, the clear thin flexible plastic). The 2x torque is achieved by the string wrapping a 2x diameter pulley and a 1x diameter pulley. So every other section of the downgearing station will be 2x in diameter for this to work. Each downgearing station will be clockwise or counter clockwise rotating depending on which string it is downgearing. As the torque increases, the total wraps happening at each station decrease because the string travel is decreasing in distance by 1/2 the previous station's distance of string travel. At each station, as this phenomena occurs, a stronger fishing line can be used that is larger in diameter as needed. So only the first couple stations will use that 6lb fishing line but later stations will swap to stronger stuff since higher torques are getting involved at that point.

The thumb tacks I considered welding together or brazing together. I considered Oxy-Acetylene micro torch welding, large soldering iron brazing, micro tig welding, pulse welding with a jewelry welder, spot welding, etc. But all of these approaches I am not that experienced with. I think I'll try brazing first and if I struggle with that I'll move to fiberglass and superglue where I have the most experience.

My intention is to join each downgearing station thumb tack into its neighbor at the base and get them all to form a flat plane for stability and precise positioning. I intend to prepare the stations all together off the motor. Then when it is one solid structure with all of them glued to their neighbor and all pulley plastic discs added, at that point I can attach the whole assembly onto the 2430 BLDC motor top and suture it into place there. The teflon guidance hose attachment guide structure will also have to be part of this assembly for easy and secure attachment of the teflon hoses at the end.
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Mechanics and Construction / Re: My Advanced Realistic Humanoid Robot Project
« Last post by artbyrobot1 on October 08, 2024, 09:18:17 PM »
By popular demand, here is some math I did regarding the motor and pulleys for the finger actuation.

64:1 downgear ratio

24 inches total draw onto motor shaft 24 / 64 = 0.37" draw at finger joint

2430 motor 5900kv at 12v RPM = kV * V RPM = 5900 * 12 RPM = 69600
69600 / 60 = 1160 revs/second 1160/2 = 580 revs / half second
580/2 = 290 revs / quarter second

if motor reels around 1cm / rev then in quarter second it reels 290cm...
and 30cm = 1 foot so 290/30 = 9.6ft/quarter second maybe it only reels 3/4 of
that? even so... around 9.5ft/quarter second - and quarter second is the
speed of a human finger moving... we only want to reel 24 inches... and
it is reeling 9.5ft so if it only reeled 24 inches that would be human
speed... so if it only reeled 60cm that would be human speed... but it
reels 290cm... around 4.8x human speed!

now for strength at this 64:1... an online google search said a 2430 motor
can pull 60 g cm... 120 g at 1/2cm 240g at 1/4cm maybe we are around
between 1/4cm and 1/2 cm away from shaft of motor on average... so 190g at
that distance... 190g is 0.42lb... 0.42 lb * 64 = 27lb

so a single finger joint can do 27 lb dumbell curls ALONE - well wait since
it's lifting a lever at the joint, it is much lower than this maybe 1/5
of this so 5.4lb dumbel curl is more realistic...

now this is all for torque at efficient natural movement speed...

what about stall torque - IE how much can it just HOLD in place like rock
climbing dead weight it can't move but can hold steady?

it's stall torque is around 280 g.cm compare that to its normal torque
of 60 g.cm so 4x... so it can HOLD steady around 20lb! that is about what
my finger can hold steady for a single finger tip!
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Mechanics and Construction / Re: My Advanced Realistic Humanoid Robot Project
« Last post by artbyrobot1 on October 06, 2024, 05:54:33 AM »
Ok so my solution is to sew a fishing hook's eye into the bone sleeve snugly with upholstery thread as a anchor point. Then I will draw my braided PE fishing line through this eye and back down. Instead of tying it off with a fancy knot which acts as a weak point or concentrated stress point, I will use a fishing crimp sleeve to crimp the rope off on itself. Similar to crimping two pieces of wire to eachother with a electrical crimp tube. Supposedly fishing crimp sleeves are used to avoid knot tying and offer even more integrity than a knot can while maintaining fishing line integrity more than a knot can. No weakness is introduced to the line like knots do. A side benefit is this crimp also protects the line from abrasion and acts as a physical standoff so the line isn't rubbing the bone sleeve as much which can cause micro abrasions and weaken it over time. I bought #2 and #3 fishing crimp sleeves which were around $6/100pcs on amazon.
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Mechanics and Construction / Re: My Advanced Realistic Humanoid Robot Project
« Last post by artbyrobot1 on October 02, 2024, 07:57:56 PM »
I finished fixing the fishing line on the bottom-most pulley with 5 knots this time to make sure it doesn't untie.  I hung the 10lb dumbbell from the pulley system and to my horror, two fishing line points snapped almost immediately in two new spots.  These fishing lines were rated 20lb test and 130lb test.  How is a 10lb dumbbell snapping them when hung gently?  I don't get this AT ALL.  I am wondering if it is a quality control issue with the fishing line or false advertising or just a bad manufacturer or what.  Any thoughts?  This is VERY frustrating and baffling to me.  They did not untie this time they literally snapped in half.  This is truly baffling.



Update: some more clues:  turns out both snap points were within a millimeter from where the fishing line entered into the bone fabric sleeve where it was stitched over and over to tie it well into the sleeve.  Perhaps this area just sort of was weakened by the sleeve and tugging at that spot and abrasion somehow?  I am thinking I should tie a small metal ring into the bone fabric sleeve and then tie the fishing line onto that ring with a figure eight knot so that the fishing line doesn't chafe on the nylon fabric as much and has that little separation point tying off on the smooth metal.  Hopefully that will solve it.
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Mechanics and Construction / Re: My Advanced Realistic Humanoid Robot Project
« Last post by artbyrobot1 on September 27, 2024, 09:37:33 PM »




With my existing snatch block and block and tackle style pulley systems tested and working decently at 16:1 downgearing ratio which feels pretty complex and capped out by space constraints, I am now turning my attention back to some prior concepts for rotating in place pulleys I had planned years back and not revisited till now.

The basic idea is you have a big pulley and a small pulley attached to eachother one on top of the other and so when the big one winds, the small one moves too and going from a small to a big to a small again (just like gears) gives you mechanical advantage. This is like gearless gears in a way works exact same way as gears except can't go continuously in one direction since its limited by amount of windings you can fit on it.

Having a setup like this mounted direct to the motor is a no brainer I think. It will give me a 2:1 or 3:1 downgear straight off the batt and should be fairly easy to make using a 1mm OD x 20mm length stainless steel dowel pin mounted to side of motor sewn into place tightly and then using a little copper tubing for a electrical connector as the rotating sleeve and onto this sleeve gluing down the flanges using the same plastic as what I used for the pulleys (clear sushi and produce containers plastic). That pre-downgearing at the location of the motor will bring our Archimedes pulley system from 16:1 down to 32:1 and possibly 48:1 roughly if we can get between 2:1 and 3:1 downgearing ratio on the motor.

I also am considering just doing ONLY these types of rotating in place pulleys instead of the Archimedes pulleys style of downgearing. It might be more space efficient perhaps. I don't know which will be more robust and which will be a maintenance nightmare. I just don't know which is easiest to work with. Also which is easier to make. I have to make both styles and compare. I think the turn in place style may be more space efficient by a long shot but not 100% sure on this.

When I do the turn in place style mounted flat onto the robot's bones, I plan to use a flat head thumb tack for this as the bone mounted base and then have the rotating pulleys turning in place over this. The flat head thumb tack can be sewn tightly onto the bone sleeve to secure it in place well. I'm not sure how well this approach will scale to higher forces of larger muscles though. Perhaps it will scale fine if I just make the pulleys bigger. So much to experiment with...
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Mechanics and Construction / Re: My Advanced Realistic Humanoid Robot Project
« Last post by artbyrobot1 on September 27, 2024, 05:03:17 AM »


Sorry for the long wait. Got busy with other stuff. Anyways, I completed the full pulley system and just got done testing it. It did not snag once anymore (rope binding between pulley and flanges) because each spot prone to that issue I fixed by putting some clear thin fishing line across that gap and gluing it down on either end. This closed every gap causing issues before and now everything seems to be going smoothly.

I just did a big testing session on the pulley system and it was working perfectly (actuating it by hand for now). However, I got very aggressive and tried to attach a 10 lb dumbbell to one end and test that way. Pretty quickly the bottom-most string of the bottom-most pulley snapped. At first I thought the string itself broke in half but it's 20 lb test so a 10 lb dumbbell statically hanging should have been fine. Turned out it was my knot that came undone! I should have tied it a triple knot at least and put super glue onto it too in order to really secure it. Turns out that particular string attachment point I wanted to upgrade to 70 lb test anyways so it wasn't such a big deal. That will be my next step.

Once I get that re-secured, I want to test it out with the 10 lb dumbbell and use a digital fish hanging scale to test the real world mechanical advantage. My intention is to find out how many pounds of pulling force I'm using to raise the 10lb dumbbell. It should be WAY less than 10lb obviously due to the mechanical advantage from all the pulleys. This will also tell us how much friction there is in the system which I'm sure is significant but I will know by this test EXACTLY how much is involved.

The fact it is all working in general is very promising. The tests went very well just using one hand pulling down as the weight to be lifted and one hand doing the lifting on the other end. The hand I tried to pull down with was EASILY being lifted up. It did like 10-15 trials with no binding, tangles, or issues of any sort. It just WORKED. Too bad I didn't take a short video of the testing before it broke!
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Misc / Re: Survey about Exoskeletons
« Last post by skrak on September 25, 2024, 08:36:58 PM »
Hi everyone,

I would like to become more active in the field of exoskeletons - probably building an exoskeleton.
The questions are somehow always the same with every such project: Why? How come? What for? Pourquoi?

You could help me, focusing on "the right" exoskeleton. I just would like to find out, what makes sense most.
At least I would like to avoid, just building an exoskeleton only for myself. Probably it could be useful for some other people as well.

That's why I've created a short survey (<7min) to shed some light on it.
I would be very happy if you could take part in it and give me feedback:
https://yujp90be53w.typeform.com/to/mOvytIhT

I am very grateful for your feedback!
Of course, if you are interested, I could present the results here.

Best regards
Enrico  :)


Hi I have filled out this survey. There are a lot of interesting questions here. Hope you find the information useful.
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Mechanics and Construction / Re: My Advanced Realistic Humanoid Robot Project
« Last post by artbyrobot1 on August 03, 2024, 03:19:48 PM »
So the pulleys were working fine except occasionally the thread would wedge between the plastic discs and the bearing causing the system to jam. My solution originally was to cut out finger nail clipping shaped pieces of thin clear plastic to glue onto the inner face of the discs that contain the bearing of the pulley which would act as standoffs preventing the pulley string from sliding between the bearing and the outer discs and jamming. It turned out this was borderline impossible for me as these tiny pieces of plastic were so tiny that even my precision tweezers were barely able to hold them and they would go flying in random directions and get lost - being clear and tiny they were near impossible to find as well. So this led me to taking a step back for a few weeks to work on other unrelated projects and take a break due to this impass/dead end. I came up with some ways to redo the pulleys but hated the idea of scrapping the ones I already made that needed improving. Well I have great news: I did find a way to salvage my existing pulleys that is reasonably doable and not nearly as hard though still tedious as can be. I am using Singer nylon clear monofilament thread and gluing down one end of that to the outer plastic disc of the pulley using superglue applied with the tip of a tiny sewing needle as my applicator and then letting that fully dry (can't use accelerant spray since it has to be very precisely applied and can't get on bearing but is being glued less than a millimeter away from bearing outer race). Then I lay the string along the crack formed between the bearing and the outer plastic disc which fills that crack and I apply glue here and there once every millimeter as I see need for it to secure the string along the entire crack while being careful not to get any on the metal bearing. I use an xacto knife blade to scrape any glue I get on the outer race of the bearing off and any I do get on the bearing I prevent from gluing the clear monofilament thread to the bearing by moving the bearing a couple turns while the glue is drying to keep it from gluing in place. I move the bearing using the tip of the xacto knife blade and I scrape any glue off as I see it on the shiny outer race of the bearing. I use about a 3" long piece of thread each time I do these gap filling passes and then trim off the excess from both sides once done. Attached is a photo with arrows indicating the gap filling clear nylon monofilament thread. I have since tested these pulleys that I fixed and no more jamming is occurring - it worked! Now I want to avoid doing this for every pulley and every crack on every pulley so for now I'm just doing it for known trouble cracks on certain pulleys that prove to jam up the system during testing. Once I can pass all testing without a jam for like 50 back and forth tests in a row, then I'll call this fix done.




Note: for future pulley making, to avoid this issue entirely, I plan to make the bearings outer race be grooved before I even make the pulley. This way the string passing over the outer race circumference of the pulley will not end up wedging between the outer disc and the pulley in the crack and jamming. The groove on the outer race of the pulley will keep the string passing along its outer race centralized in that grooved channel so it doesn't walk out and get jammed anywhere. To achieve adding a groove to the bearing outer race, I'm planning to lay the bearing flat on a piece of wax paper and then carefully applying epoxy to the crack between the paper and the pulley outer race filling that crack. Picture caulking a bathtub crack between bathtub and wall. Same concept. Then once that is done I flip the pulley and do the same for the other side. You then end up with a v grooved channel in the outer race of the pulley. The rest of the pulley assembly will continue as usual. Attached is a drawing of a pulley on a piece of wax paper with an epoxy bead applied filling the crack and forming one half of the intended v grooved channel on the outer race of the pulley.




Note: hitting that dead end with trying to fix the jamming issues with the pulleys and frustration with the pulley fix caused me to procrastinate on the robot build and temporarily call off my commitment to work on the robot every day even if just one small accomplishment per day. I still love that commitment and am now getting back to that now that I have come up with my solution and am moving forward again. It really is a great commitment to make sure I keep the project alive and actively in development. It is so easy to just not work on the robot once it is no longer part of my daily routine and the last thing I want is for months or years to slip by without me working on the robot much as has happened to me in the past so many times.
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Electronics / Re: Control board for Pool Robot no longer working
« Last post by artbyrobot1 on July 18, 2024, 02:09:22 PM »
I think so.
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Electronics / Control board for Pool Robot no longer working
« Last post by born2fly on July 10, 2024, 01:54:23 PM »
I'm new to the forum. I repair various electronic devices. Recently I received 2 non-working control boards,  built by 2 different manufacturers for pool robots. One board had 2 obvious faults that resulted from overloading. Those 2 burnt components were replaced to no avail. The other board had no obvious damage. Neither of the board's fuses blew.  Both do have a Microcontroller IC that I suspect might be at fault. Schematics are not available. I have spent days going over both of these boards trying to figure out where the fault is.  >:( 

Is it possible for an overload to corrupt the Microcontroller IC? Both customers have told me their 'pool supply guy' has numerous people in need of repair of these boards but after spending so much time trying to determine what failed I can't help but wonder if I am just wasting my time if it is a Microcontroller IC issue.
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