motor in stall

so, the computer fix was amazing! all i lost was a week or so of photos of building the battleship. thankfully i posted the good ones on this blog, so i can at least retrieve the lo-res versions of any good photo that i lost. otherwise i recovered everything i wanted/needed! incredible!

back to the build. i installed the motors. the right motor went in smoothly, lines up near perfect and is set and doesn't need to be moved ever again. the left one... not so good. i installed it twice and will remove it twice. the first time because i had calibrated it to the point where the prop shaft can expand to (essentially the shaft has a little bit of wiggle room inside its housing ~half an inch perhaps~ and it can slide in the housing either in or out. this time i set the motor up in the spot at one extreme end of the shaft wiggle room. not horrible but not desirable either.) this is a photo of the successful right installation


now, the second time i installed it, the motor sits slightly too high and so the dog bone wobbles slightly. (the dog bone is the method with which the motor is connected to the prop shaft [and is the piece that i was missing in all of my prototypes, basically the savior piece of the boat]) the wobble is small and so the current configuration is functional, but again not desirable. plus, i didn't notice the wobble until just a moment ago so i will have to remount this motor mount again tomorrow because its too late tonight.

the rudder was a smoother installation. now, i guess thats not entirely fair to say because its not permanently installed, only temporary, but for the moment its the case. i epoxied in the rudder housing and cut done the rudder shaft to fit in the boat. then i fixed up a tiller arm to fit in the small small area that it has to fit in. i epoxied a number of shims for the rudder servo to sit on and be surrounded by. i haven't decided whether i want to epoxy the servo in or come up with a detachable method for installation - that will come tomorrow. however i tested the current set-up out and it works great!


i drew up the entire pump schematic (AGAIN!) and am going to have to spend another day (or hopefully half day) soldering it all together. it means at least one more trip to an rc shop for some more deans connectors and maybe some servo extensions. [on a side note, i got some servo balloons to hopefully keep the out-of-radio-box servos somewhat dry. its going to look funky though. as for the radio box, its going to be mostly water tight. hopefully.]

big day today! big day tomorrow too!

crash!

my computer died after i came in from working yesterday. i couldn't connect my camera so i turned it off and turned it back on... except it didn't come back on... i frantically did all i could and then decided i needed a genius. so i went to the apple store and they not only told me i needed a new harddrive (which i was expecting from what i read online), they said theyd do it for free! and oh ya, they didn't carry the 80gb version any more would it be alright if the gave me a 120 GB hard drive? i calmly (ha!) said yes. they installed it and in the afternoon i went and picked it up. its loading my previous time machine back up as we speak (i'm on some other computer).

in terms of the battleship. some progress. you know, not much, just installed the motors and working on installing the rudder. little stuff.

hopefully i can write a full post from my computer after i'm done for the night. pictures hopefully.

basic logic

hey guys. its starting to look like a boat! today i worked on the submerged pump like i talked about yesterday, glueing the cap and piping to the pump, simulating the installation on a piece of plastic so i didn't put a bad hole in the hull. its going to work nicely :)

i'm planning out the interior organization, finding where everything goes. picked up a PC circuit board housing that will work nicely as the radiobox because the tupperware i stole from my mom actually isn't desirable. (funny side note. i just realized the stealth theivery wasn't very secretive. my mom is reading the blog. so i tipped her off to my crime. oh well. i'm returning the tupperware so all ends well).

i'm also working on the circuitry for the pump. it turns out the fill switch is on when i want it to be off and off when i need it to be on. sucks. but i went to my dad and he suggested i use a SPDT (single pole double throw) relay. [big words present to impress] basically, what i've been assure it'll do is switch the switch so that it turns on when i want on and off when i want off. i just have to make it do that still. i've been sitting on the floor of the garage playing with the ohmmeter and alligator clips and it feels like physics lab all over again. except this time i have to make it work without D. Lawrence explaining things for an hour until i'm so bored i stop trying to understand and just brainlessly do e.x.a.c.t.l.y. w.h.a.t. h.e. s.a.y.s. without it actually making sense. this way is a lot more fun than that. its all logic switches and such (hence the title)

still waiting on the damn motor mount to come in. i'm going to be PISSED if it doesn't come in tomorrow. basically i'm hosed if it doesn't. no way around it.

oh, and i just learned one of the band members has offered me use of his machine shop and any material i might need from it. (CRAZY GOOGELY EYES AND MOUTH GAPING OPEN IN EXCITEMENT/DISBELIEF!) if only i had known about it sooner!

i'll post pictures later tonight after i'm done with stuff

all the little pieces

been doing lots of the little things still. the fill switch is in place, needs to be tested but its in. the battleswitch is all set to go, and it has been tested. my dad and i worked on the submerged pump fitting so that it keeps the hull dry, and that should work. this new plan is a little bit more complicated than the one i had yesterday, but its more practical. i'll work on that tomorrow. the motor mount should come in tomorrow, install those pieces on friday i suppose. i gotta look into the foam flotation inserts too. o and i learned the battery i have is not water suitable, so its 50/50 whether i use it in a waterproof box or go elsewhere. gotta look into that.

*update* here are some pictures that took along the way

component fitting

still waiting on the second motor mount so i'm not ready to epoxy anything in yet. however, i'm fitting all the pieces with wood blocks and other plates so I can fix them on the hull. had to come up with a method to make the secondary pump sit SUBMERGED in water inside the hull while the rest of the inside is free of the H2O. tricky business. so theres that project, then i have to make the fill switch work in the tank to control the secondary pump. bit of a snag in the project, but not worth describing in too much detail. i just have to make the connections waterproof without much room to maneuver because its all on the inside of the tank. basically like the boat in a bottle project. then i work on the connections between pumps and tank. after that, i can hook it up to the wiring i've prepared and the pump/gun system is ready to go. after that i'll just be working on installation.

i'm gonna go back to it!

countdown begins

i couldn't find a battleship related countdown, so this will have to do.

solder machine!

this morning i soldered all that i think i had left to solder. that included the motors, pumps, battle switch, esc, parallel leads, etc. and actually, now that i think bout it, i still have to put in the fuse and fill switch. damn. so i'm almost done with the soldering. but i am done with the connections to the drive system components and so i can test the system tonight when i get back from Jobtrain.

holy toledo!

goodness gracious great balls of fire! this thing might actually work!

i am all but ready for installation of the drive train. now that i think about it, i flew through what i was terrified about for the whole project.

i drilled out the prop shaft holes today, and soldered the assembly tubes (the two scariest tasks because virtually any mistake would be fatal).

i found appropriate shimming for the motors such that they should sit in place well. i began soldering all the wiring for the drive system, still working on the Y wiring cause i'm not very good at keeping things compact and the heat shrink doesn't fit around the connection i made. have to go redo it tomorrow. but i'm almost totally finished with the drive equipment except installation! holy moly frijole! i still need to make a base for the radio and battery equipment, then hook it all up and find myself a lake! i may also go ahead and add foam to make sure it CANNOT sink. ya. prolly will do that first. but thats not sexy to talk about, so i'll skip over that bit.

from there, i figure out how to have a hole in the hull and not sink. not a big deal or anything.... thats for the refill pump. should take maybe a day or two. along the way i'll be installing the turret as well as the tank. (that dang piece that i've made 5 different times is halfway acceptable. i'll make version 5A tomorrow most likely) then i fit the deck, install it. then take everything apart to seal it (so its as waterproof as possible), possibly paint it, and then i'm ready to ride.

dare i say, "i can see the finish line"? maybe i'll wait till the boat drives before i say it. maybe...

finally some progress

except for tyler distracting me for about an hour, i was kinda sorta productive today. got the rudder prepped and drilled the holes so that its ready for final installation when the time comes. the motor plans aren't very good at all and so i've been terrified of going forward on my own about that. today however i pushed on. drilled out the first shaft hole and it actually worked. its going to be functional! no installation of the stuff yet but still exciting that i took the first step out into the abyss and managed to find a patch of land.

another roadblock

again i can't get to work on the motor cause i seem to be missing a part. damn. instead i'm outfitting a mock up version of the boat to make sure everything fits together nicely

end of the day luck

DAMN!

i was all through building, putting it all back together for maybe the final time (prior to painting and installation) and murphy got me! my dad walked in to check it out and i'm putting the final touches on and i broke the second barrel and the piece i described yesterday (the one that i said was ridiculous but effective. it has gone through 2 more revisions and will now need a third one tomorrow).

GAH!!!

i'll finish the turret tomorrow and get to the motor installation cause now i can't procrastinate a day cause i just lost one.

two for one

wow, that was the first day i worked and didn't blog. pretty good streak for me

k, so, major turret progress today (mostly) and a little bit from yesterday. i built the housing for the turret and installed it all around the the elevation servo and azimuth servo as well. its going to be pretty sick. the bottom and backing are plastic so they're see-through but then i'm going to paint the top steel grey. you'll be able to sort of see into the turret if you're at the right angle, should be kinda cool.

i started to fit the barrels on the servo, when i realized it wouldn't fit. so i changed the attachment mechanism to a nifty block thats screwed onto the servo horn and then drilled through for the barrel to sit in. sneaky design that i have to pat my back for.


anyways, once that was fixed, i set about building the plate that would hold the dummy barrels (cause the water gun will only shoot out of one of the turret's barrels, the others are just for show). i figured out that ALso wouldn't fit, so i came up with a slightly more ridiculous fix and pushed on. you can see the fix a little bit in this picture. its a block of wood between the two barrels with a hose clamp attached to each. not the best way to support the second tube, but it works

the next thing that wouldn't fit was the servo bracket, so i dissasembled the whole system again. (each time i did this, both directions took maybe 4 or 5 minutes. and i did it maybe 4 times. the time adds up!) this time i had to file down the aluminum bracket which was a butt! but eventually it fit. and that was good :)

heres the whole assembly (minus the barrels) hidden away inside the turret housing that i spent the day building


for tomorrow, i need to cut slots from which the two barrels will poke out of the housing. gonna use a dremmel for that. next i'll make holes for the wiring and water-tubing to come through. then, its onto the motor. thats going to be a big big project. so i may stall and go find something else to be doing while i cower away from the mountain.

coming together nicely!

another pothole... er... porthole

ran into another bump in the road. i don't have any of the schematics for rudder placement and stuffing tube / motor placement. gotta get that stuff from the dude before i can install the running gear. however he's gone for a week. and i've already been sitting around on him a week. so i was pissed all morning. my dad saved the day by cheering me up.

afterwards, I came to realize the sheer scope of the build. no way in hell i'm going to be able to make this thing into the gorgeous warship i was planning by the time tahoe rolls around. time to alter the course a little. basically i'm going to change the fittings above deck to fit things that i can do. also, i'll design it around the water-cannon. that way the important hardware more easily integrates with the aesthetics.

today i prototyped the turret shell and went and got parts for the secondary pump to feed into the holding tank. not much progress but my spirits are somewhat salvaged - overall a successful day considering.

subdeck assembly

For the first day working on the new boat, I set to work on the subdeck. this is the part that the main deck rests on in the boat. the subdeck will be glued in place so the main deck can be put in and out easily.

basically building the subdeck entailed fitting the main deck with a trim all the way around that matched the contour of the inside of the hull. that way i could snugly place the assembly in the hull for glueing. the cutting of the pieces was a breeze but the matching took hours of sanding!

since i was only temporarily laying the subdeck on the main deck, i hardly glued it together and so had no stability or strength with which to sand against. while sanding the subdeck to fit the hull, i constantly dislodged the pieces and had to reglue them. what started out as a nice relaxing hour of sanding turned into a very thought intensive process. i had to visualize (without seeing) what parts must be hitting eachother and then remember where in order to go sand that area. but i had no clues except that the overall assembly didn't fit. from the picture you can see sort of what i went through, theres no line of sight to the subdeck or where it was too large to fit in the hull. it was almost a guess and check sort of deal.



believe it or not, building the subdeck took the WHOLE DAY! tomorrow i'll start spec'ing out the placement of the stuffing tubes, rudder, etc.

And so it begins

Well, i went ahead and bought a hull! butterflies fluttering up and down my back, i pressed the "pay" button and that was that. i was buying a hull.

and you know what? its a kick ass hull! i don't have any buyer's remorse yet. which is extremely exciting!

tomorrow i'll get up and get to work.

heres a shot of the hull next to the subskate prototype

i got a boat?

well, i've placed the boat order. should be ready by thursday or maybe friday. i got a hole flock of butterflies in my stomach - whether its big enough for the parts (which i believe it is), wether its small enough to fit in the car (which i'm sure it is), whether it'll fare ok against the tahoe conditions. i'm just all around nervous. but at least i made the call, and we're pushing forward. i'm gonna have a boat! theres no backing out now!

a couple of side notes: he's selling me a bilge pump he custom builds that may work as an all in one gun pump instead of the toy pump, we'll see.

chutes and ladders

roller coaster wasn't quite erratic enough a description of this process.

i just called the hull dude, and i'm driving there this afternoon to pickout and pick up a hull. holy shit. that was the ladder to the finish line! i need to make a decision today. and with no daniel to consult, no dad to consult, its all on me to make the call. typical me, i've analyzed everything down to the projected gun time (if the refill pump doesn't work). i just gotta make the call.

by next update, i'll have a boat?

roller coasters run on the sea

Hey guys (maybe theres 2 of you now, maybe colin is out there??.... but probably not).

came away significantly discouraged after the launch yesterday at jacks. problem was the same as it was the first jack launch, same as the sagan launch, same as way back in the kiddy pool. the drive of the screw can't be sustained by the rinky dink rig i've put together. i guess i'm just recapping, so i'll skim over the possible courses of actions: rigid motor shaft. gear the motor. well theres a new one. change the screw pitch. my dad suggested this one to change the load on the motor and gear without actually gear the motor. nifty idea. i'm ordering a slew of 3 dollar screws to try all sorts of combinations. it'll mean i need to devise some test rig - i can't disassemble the entire boat and slip on a new screw 5 times. its a sure fire 15 minutes of switching for 30 seconds of testing. can't do that. i'll have to build a holder for it to run on in the water and keep the electronics dry. its an interesting and onetime job.

i contacted the hull building guy and i need to make a decision soon. it'll help that conferring with dad has led to me purchasing a little submersible pump that should function to keep the holding tank sufficiently filled so i can use a littler hull. hopefully i can find the balls (or more likely stupidity) to just go buy the hull and fully commit myself.

launch at jacks again

just got back from launching at jack's house again. nothing improved. i moved the rudder down so its mostly in the water but the travel is way way way too small to do much of anything. the same problem persisted with the drive. it just can't handle the motor spinnning fast at all. it fails at 4 or 5 notches of throttle. its the same as the first time we tested at jack's pool. so i don't think we've learned anything at all. its very discouraging. my dad suggested getting different pitched scews to put greater load on the motor and maybe slow down the spinning and push the boat more. its a good idea i suppose. and its the second to last resort before i have to go gear the whole thing. the last shot is to get a rigid motor and shaft and see if that works. i don't know, i'm discouraged. i have to order the real boat soon or there won't be any time to start work on it. but i don't know how big a boat to be getting. ARRRG!

launch lesson 2

hey loyal followers (ha!)

good news and bad from yesterday's launch. it didn't sink. which is great news. but it also didn't exactly work either. the force of the prop dislodged the housing it was in and made the universal joint come off at slow speeds. the fix is to add a stopper to hold the prop housing in place. did that today. i'll reschedule pool time for tomorrow maybe.

subskate 2 ready for deployment!

great news: ready for testing tomorrow!

i finished the radio box, installed all the components (including a monitoring device "watt's up" to view the voltage, current, wattage, and amp-hours left) and installed some water shields for the electronics outside the radiobox.

while the water shields are not even remotely sufficient to keep the rudder servo and motor completely dry, it will prevent most of the splashing from getting to the electronics. if the boat starts going under, its all over, but i don't forsee that happening (fingers crossed).


heres a picture of the radio box with all the stuff inside it. like i said, its not fully waterproof - water is a tricky sob! however, i'm pretty happy with how it turned out. everything fits, connects well, and shaffer's idea of putting the connectors in the wall worked moderately well. because of how the wires are soldered, the connections don't go through the holes i made for them perfectly. they function, just not ideally. its mostly the same with the servo cable connector: i had a terrible time making a rectangular hole with a circular drill bit. I had to overshoot the mark and it means there's gaps around the connector. o well, i never saw this radio box being the permanent r-box.


I installed the turret servos in the brackets that came in yesterday and it looks like its going to work perfectly. the turret is going to be top heavy for sure, but i've been planning on streamlining the assembly for the final version (right now the pieces are 3 brass tubes (all cantilevered off the servo adding even more torque), 1 copper connecter, a wood piece, and the screws+nuts). in fact, when I plugged them in, the elevation servo was jumpy in a way that i haven't seen before. that being said, i've done the math, and the servo is rated strong enough to handle the assembly as it is right now. i'm not comfortable pushing it to the limit its at right now, but it'll do for now. here are some pictures of the turret's range of motion




for fun, at the end of the day (actually i worked at night today, but whatever), i put the two projects together. check it out. looks sorta like a battleship!!!!


(p.s. daniel i sent you a fb message, hopefully you check fb sometime before lunch tomorrow because thats when i'm calling ben. i can schedule the pool test whenever so if you have time after work, let me know asap so i can make the appointment then instead of earlier.

skate v2 half done

the second version of the subskate battleship is halfway done. i installed the rudder and tiller arm today and they work pretty well. it is a prototype so its not perfect, but its certainly functional. the radiobox parts got in late this evening so i'll finish that tomorrow and then be ready to go pool testing on wednesday probably. exciting stuff

first parts in!

Hooray! i guess they delivered the first parts on thursday after daniel and i left because they were on the porch. these were the motor mount + rudder kit set of parts. I mounted the motor so now i can bring the motor up to virtually any throttle level i want (whereas before the missaligned motor shaft / screw shaft limited the throttle level to one or two notches [remember the physics talk from before?] ). thats a huge huge relief. worked most of the afternoon making that work because the adjustable mount goes 5 degrees too short for the adjustment that i needed (because of my inexperiance in laying out the drive shaft - i just didn't have any idea what angle to put it at, so i just guessed. and was wrong). eventually i solved the hiccup with a strategically placed shim and zip ties. motor is secured on the subskate!


then i went to work on the rudder. this is a REAL rudder! no epoxied junk. that was really nice because it lent nicely to keeping the rudder plum with the boat. it took maybe an hour to install the rudder nicely and then i realized the screw was in the way of the zip tie. brilliant (read frantic) thinking saved the day. i just added another block to offset where the ties went and then also rerouted the critical zip tie. so the rudder is on!



i started work mounting the rudder servo and was making slow but evident progress when i realized a roadblock. since the rudder is real-deal, its made out of actual steel. the problem is i need to drill into the steel rudder to atach the tiller arm (which, along with the push rod, is the mechanism that relays the rudder servo's motion). i've got the tools to do so, its just a bigger deal than drilling into something like balsa. it was 7 o'clock and i'm hungry and so i decided that was a good place to break before i lost focus and screwed something up.

once i secure the tiller arm onto the rudder, mount the rudder servo on the subskate, I'll have updated all the hardware that lays outside the radiobox. radiobox parts hopefully will come in tomorrow and then i'll spend tomorrow finishing everything inside the r-box and be ready for another test day on tuesday! wooooo doggie! getting exciting again!

new wind

great weekend in the big TaHOE and i'm back with a new wind for the project. 3 sets of new parts are due in sometime in the next day or two, and so i should be ready to test out a new subskate prototype in a couple of days.

i asked my dad to do some web searching for motor knowledge and he came back with a bunch of great websites that will help me learn enough about motors to go buy the right one.

hopefully a big update tomorrow

modeling and testing

hey, no parts in yet, just sitting around waiting for them. thats why i spent today modeling. nothing important, just more practice with solidworks. o well.

per daniel suggestion, i'm bringing up some servos, the controller, receiver, and battery up to tahoe to test the sort of range we get on water. should be at least 500-1000+ feet. we'll see.

as such, may or may not have new updates from tahoe. i haven't decided if i'm going to keep the streak alive. i prolly will though. gotta keep the peeps happy!