September 2000

5^th September 2000

While surfing the web I came across the web site for the Big Cheese robot that also sold wheel chair motorsfor 20 pounds each. These were rated at about 800 watts, which was more the power rating I was looking for. If the current ones I'm proposing to use don't work out, I will probably look more into using these motors instead. But at that price, it might be worth buying them anyway. I will have to see how the funds are looking at the end of the month.

7^th September 2000

The remaining go kart wheel rims, small drive sprockets, and chains arrived today. I now only need four tyres to make the wheels usable!

8^th September 2000

Spoke with the guy from Southern Pneumatics Ltd who said he had two rams with a bore of 32 mm and stroke of about 150 mm that I could have for free. He said he would post them off to me since I didn't live locally. What a nice chap!

15^th September 2000

Phoned SKF who said they had had problems with the inserts I wanted not being in the country, but they had now arrived and would be with me no later than Tuesday 19th September. I shall keep my fingers crossed! I also talked to the KR karting about the second hand tyres and he said he had finally located some, and would be putting them in the post. I now have two sets of fingers crossed!

19^th September 2000

Two pneumatic rams arrived in the post from the supplier in Slough. They had a bore of about 32 mm and stroke of about 200 mm, which should do nicely!

20^th September 2000

I placed an order for some more steel with my local supplier who said that he had just had the steel I wanted cleared out by some other local roboteer who had previously got through some of the preliminary rounds of Robot wars. He told him that there were a lot of robots that would "muller any other robot" but they didn't always get invited to participate. The main criteria was to look good! Even if you are hopelessly equipped and get trashed straight away, as long as you have good looks, you are likely to get selected. Something to remember I think!

Tuesday 26^th September 2000

I had contact from Superwinch who are a company dealing in winches of all kinds, some of which are fitted to cars. Some of their winch motors would be powerful enough for drive motors for the robots, so I have been in contact with them over the last few weeks. They may be interested in sponsorship in exchange for showing off their logo. However, since Robot Wars forbids logos on the robots themselves, one of the alternative ways of advertising your sponsors is on a web site. I had thought of getting a web site going for a little while now, but this focused my mind. I quickly knocked up a robot home page and replied to Superwinch with the Robot Wars ruling on logo displays. I also gave them my web site URL so they could see I was serious about showing off their logo. I shall await their comments.

Wednesday 27^th September 2000

I had a phone call from Fairchild who I had sent a fax to about MOSFETs almost three weeks ago, and whom I had almost given up hope on. The guy there said Fairchild were willing to donate MOSFET samples for my motor controller, and maybe interested in further sponsorship as well. They took the details of the MOSFETs I needed, and said the components would be in the post. Things are looking up!

Friday 29^th September 2000

At last, the SKF bearing arrived, but it was at 6.30pm in the evening! The bearings weren't quite the ones I thought I'd selected, but none the less they will do the job admirably.

SKF also included numerous stickers that they expected me to put on the robot. I didn't know at the time when I originally spoke to them that you couldn't advertise on the robot itself. I will include their logos on my sponsors web page instead though. As well as the bearing, I received some high current rated MOSFETs from Fairchild who I had spoken to recently. They also included in their package numerous data sheets for the high powered component which I hadn't managed to obtain before. This was all good stuff!