Car Project

I’m dreading the next devlog.

So, I made a lot of progress since the last devlog. In the last devlog, I managed to finish the gearbox to convert the dc motor’s high speed into a lot more torque. In this devlog, I managed to add a front and the top of the car, which means all the wiring was done too!

The front uses a servo to rotate the front two wheels (with disconnected axles because they turn at different speeds) which is connected to my xbox controller, so I can control it wirelessly. In this video you can see it in action, I use the d-pad because I do have stick drift so it’s just more consistent. Anyways, the x button centers the motor so you can instantly switch back to going forward immediately.

Now the bad news, when I tried making the car actually turn forward, the gears don’t turn. I assume this is because there isn’t enough torque being created, which would suggest another gear, but I don’t have the time before my vacation for that. Instead, I’ll focus on optimizing the current design as much as possible. The first of which: re-making the gearbox AGAIN.

This time, it’ll be a lot quicker, I already have the ‘template’ of the gearbox ready and I plan on ensuring the gears are aligned properly and adding straws as barriers between the cardboard and the wood axles. This is because the cardboard probably causes lots of friction, losing torque.

So yeah, tons of lessons learnt, but still a long road ahead.

Big changes to the car project!

The old design began to stop working because the cardboard gears kept wearing down and the stepper motor was a lot slower than I wanted it to be, which is why I decided to switch to 3d printed gears.

With this switch, I also decided to change from using the stepper motor primarily to now using a dc motor.

The first step to making the dc motor usable, was making a gearbox, and the first iteration didn’t go very well… I made it gears first and motor last, which caused the gears to not have enough play and required too much torque from the dc motor. Which is why I had to rebuild it, with right spacing and now it works!

The video should be a short showing of how the gearbox works!

Today I got a little bit of building done. I managed to add another layer to the car, because the previous layer was too sloped to allow for the breadboard to rest properly. The middle layer is also properly supported now and will not fold in half from the weight. I also wired everything properly and no wire can slip now.

First devlog. I started working on this project weeks ago but the hardware portion of this website was not completely done so this devlog is to log the two hours of timelapse I recorded before I gave up on trying to use this website. This project is to make a car that is remote controlled, at the moment it’s getting close to finishing. I have most of the frame created and managed to get it to move, but a lot of adjustments are needed. For one, the car is moving slowly. It also keeps breaking from the weight of the power bank. And finally, it also needs to be connected to the external controller (at the moment controlled by a button and potentiometer).