almoooost finissh CADDDD

The Design

So actuallyy the design is look exactly what i wanted to see before and im so so happy with this abiut overall construction we have today :

• coxa mounting is fixed and changed : about it i decided to start iver and make the coxa mounting better use less plactic and make each mounting seperate which allowed me to make the rangw of motion bigger because of angle of rotation of the coxa which is around 70 and im pretty sure it is enough

• added a but longer femur for bigger range of angle rotation

• and also added long curved Tibia part which is also really great

the mounting

all the parts usuallly mount with just screw and nuts but i also added holes for insert where i need 100% stability and where i have place to place the insert because it is ussually around 5-6mm hole for M3 screw and nut and around 10mm for insert nounting

the overall

im really proud of this design and think that this is gonna be great and now i just have to fixe some small parts in CAD and make BOM and etc

New design

Yeah i finally made new desing of robot

the Genrative design problem

after last attempts i actually got really good results with pretty great design but i think that they are pretty weak thats wwhy i spent all day waiting when it will generate a tonn of design with different constarins and loads and come up WITH result that im gonna make it myself and refuse the idea with light and futuristic frame

the Current design

it is pretty good i think i added the placement for bearings which will hold the axis from the oposite side of the servo shaft mirror it all and now have beatiful design of coxa

the size

about the size of the leg now im thinking to make the fibia 2 times longer than the coxa and the tibia 2.5 longer than the coxa which means the leg should be right propotional

the leg Propotions : 1:2.0:2.5

Failures again

generative design

so i have no idea now why is generative design is doing evertyhing wrong because i used everything i know and all my creativity but still this is not what i want and i think i have to just quit the idea with generative and Use FEA and a lot of a lot of time improving

the main problem

the main problem with the generative is that is always change everything in preverse and i thought if it failured when i 1. change the objective 2. constrains it is just trying to decrese anount of plastic in preverse what i dont want it to do i think

the ways i have left

• i can try again and i think i will make it sucsses next time
• i can make it myself even if it is now as good as the generated design

probably gonna make it myselg for now using generative only for small easy parts

the Finished Ultimate PCB!!!!!!!!!!

i’m actually so happy to say that this pcb is finished because now i can finally work on my CAD of robot

so here is what i did last 5 hours :

• firstly check all components of the schematics work on improving it add some extra capcitors replaced all CP 10uf to 10uf C
• added all Footprints
• placed everything and route everything

Problems

Of course i had problems while working

• The Footprint problems : i had no idea what footprints should go to usb and my buttons which is bi problem because if you choose wrong one you are definetely gonna regret it because of mounting
• The routing problem: i think it is the problem where ispent most of the time so the main reason is the placing which is really compact and makes it really hard to route and because of that while routing the 32 PWM ways connectors everything been wrong if i tried to solve one problem it causes another that why i spent a lot of time changing everyghuing all the time

Overall

so i can say that now i have ready PCB with 4 layers and compact size which takes the project to higher level

yeahhh and now i have to go study exams….

the Schematics of ultimate PCB for hexapod

include:

• 2 screw terminals for main servo power
• 1 screw terminal for 5v batt+ and gnd
• 32 sockets for 32 servos( it can handle 32 servos but 18 servos is enough for hexapod added just in case if some one want more servo )
• 2 PCA9685 for controling servos
• BNO055 for understanding the angle ( i replaced the mpu6500/9250 to bno055 because bno055 has its own brain and can calcute it while mpu cant and the price is the same sometimes mpu even more expensive than the bno055
• 2 resistors for batt sense
• esp32-s3 as main brain with ams1117 3.3 and smd buttons and usb -c port
• some LEDs for feedback

overall of schematics

i think this version is much more better than previous and will be working much much better now and gonna be more compact

next step ideas

now im thinking about finishing the pcb as soon as possible and learn to use generaive gesign properly so i can use it to make light and strong parts using 3d printed PETG because 50-60cm robot is gonna be pretty big and making it as light as possible so DS3235 servos can handle the robot easily is really important

The new ultimatee PCB

why did i start New PCB

Actully while making the CAD i was just thiinking how to make it beatiful moveable and just great and i started searching and found a lot of beatiful hexapods and found out that i really need to make my centre part thicker thats why im making the pcb with all parts in it and also to use 2 PCAs as i know i have to change the adress but i didnt really wanted to make it in ready ones

added to PCB

• 2 INA226 for collecting more data from robot
• 2 PCA9685
• ams1117 3.3
• esp32-s3 wroom1
• usb-c-16pins
  and also replaced the xl4016 8A to 300W 20A buck because 1 servo can require up to 3-4A and 18 is gonna eat around 50-60A if include the fact that im gonna use 2 buck converters it is gonna handle up to 40A and it is enough because only 6 servos gonna work on peak and only half of servos gonna work at one time which means that the 40A is gonna be a lot

Overall

im gonna finish the schematics and the PCb next session and use this small PCB in the robot and also add use FEA everywhere to decrease the weigth of robot for better performance

So im proud of myself so much because now the hexapod looks pretty good i think im done with the coxa servos mounting

the failure of Generative design

So today i forgot to record the time when i worked on my generative design stuff i wanted to make the robot really light and strong but the generation from the fusion is really bad so i had to make everything my self of course it is not as good looking as the Ai generated super robot but anyway i think it looks great for now

i aactually tried to desrease the weight of the robot as much as posiible by adding holes and etc which also works as the wire managment ways

So this session i finished mounting the electronics and made coxe servos mounting place

about some problems i am really confused how am i gonna design the other parts of legs stable and with great performance and also about thw overall look of the robot because i didnt design fully custom pcb and the Xl4016 are really massive the centre of the robot is gonna be pretty heavy and ugly

new idea

sooooooooo now im thinking to learn and use generative degisn to make it a waaaay lighter and look like ALIEN warrior spider robot

its session 5 if im not wrong and today worked on making the mounting of pcb correct and also worked on the CAD of main centre section and placement of electrical components

PCB Changes

• firstly i fixed the mounting holes place on the pcb my matching the pcb holes with pca and mpu holes
• also moved the left PCA a bit to the centre so the fisrt PCA will not interfere with the second PCA terminal block and all wires can be placed easily

CAD

• choose 14 side polygon because it is the best matching amount of sides for the good placement of servos

so overall now i have finished PCB i guess and started working on the CAD for the Hexapod robot

so this is session 4 of working on pcb and i finally finished second desgin of pcb which looks amazing

Added

• LED lights for better feedback
• a bunch of mountong holes for better placment of pcbs
• bigger capcitors
• better come and out of V servos actully seperate them into a servo line b servo line one for first xl and second for second xl

overall

i wanna say that this pcb maybe not the last one but at least great one it contains esp32-s3 mpu6500 and 2 PCa 9685 on the board and 2 XL4016 with 1 small buck down stepper also some capcitors for smooth robot performance

So last session after finishing the pcb i opened the fusion autodesk and it was blank after spending 2 days on fixing the issue i finally did it but understand that the PCB is wrong so firstly it was really ugly the PCAs mounting is really bad and i decided to make new one

updates

• i decided to add second Xl4016 because i figured out that the one xl can handle only 8A but 18 servos require a lot more so i put second one 1 Xl4016 for 1 PCA9685
• added some capcitors for smoother performance
• added LEDs
• added DIOD for protection
• i also added mounting holes for whole pcb and PCAs with MPU just in not this photo of schematics

so overall i think this design of PCB is gonna be a way better at least because i reasearched and figured out my problems

PCB V1

so this is session 2 and i made pcb
so today i had changed some things :

• i have changed the schematics a little bit by adding testpoints
• add the footprints for each component
• and made the rounting with 3 different width of lines
• added 2mm super fat lines to make it possible to work because 18 servo motors is gonna eat a lot a lot ampers and 1mm 0.5mm is just gonna fire

Todays Problem

so actually while making the pcb i got some problems fisrtly in my head the battery voltage goes directly to the xl4016 which means its not gonna get to pcb but i needded the battery voltage for that 2 resistors to understand the current voltage and battery so i decided to solder second line of wire from main wire which goes to xl4016 and head the secondary wires of battery voltage to 2 pads 2.5x2.5mm on the pcb

hi its first session working on my hexapod robot named MADHEX (name come from MAD is first 3 letters of my name and HEX is from first 3 letters of Hexapod )

So in Schematics we have :

• all of the components is ready modules and pcb is just placing one to make it clean from wires and etc
• Esp32-s3 i use it because i have it at home and i wanted to find the place for this microcontroller anyway its really great option for the controller and im pretty sure its gonna run inverse kinematics easily
• Pca9685 x2 so because the hexapod require 18 servos it need also 18 pwm signals but 1 PCA can provide only 16 what why we use 2 of them
• the step down converters i use 2 of them XL4016 for stable voltage for the servos because its big and great and mini 360 for 5v logic
• Capcitors and Resistors so as you can see in schematics i use C1 and C2 for stabilizing the voltage jumps and just making the robot smoother and resistors for Battery sense to make robot understand the current battery
• MPU 6500 its just basics for every robot and for hexapod it is the must have sensor but i choose the 6500 not the 6050 because 6500 is newer

so this is the schmeatics and everything about it it is great and powerful and the main idea is that if something is gonna brake i will just replace 1 component and it will cost cents and im not gonna replace the whole pcb