I've been doing a lot of work since last time and there have been some changes in the design as well!
After I assembled a couple of parts in FreeCAD I realized that I had miscalculated (in my head) the size of some of them 🙁
I had to flip the base plate upside down to make room for the steering cradle and remove the friction wheels, because they wouldn't fit anymore. I also had to make the propel wheel larger to get better grip and to make the ball go a bit faster.
The approximate speed is now somewhere about 10 km/h, which is a quite good speed I think.
The base plate front view - with motors and steering craddle and its servo
The base plate rear view - with steering cradle-shaft and ball bearing
The ball with the propel system inside
(I've removed some parts to make the platform visible)
The steering cradle will work by moving the center of gravity towards either the left or the right side of the ball. The steering servo will be hooked up to a gyro, mounted on the base plate, that will make the driving nice and smooth.
There will be a lithium polymer battery, that will act as the power supply and counterweight, and a BEC mounted on the bottom of the cradle. I'm not sure, but I also might put the ECS's on the sides of the cradle to save space and add weight.
There's still a little bit of work left on the steering cradle and there might be some other pieces left to CAD that will fixate ESC's and other electronics.
Otherwise I'm waiting for my "dealer" to get a controller device for the Mendel 90, unfortunately the laptop he used had some other business to do! 😉
When he's up and running again, hopefully the first "real" parts will be printed, starting with one main bow consisting of two pieces. If that turns out well, two pieces of the center hub, one sliced with the slice and one unsliced, and two stabilizer bows (center and side bow) will be printed.
Hopefully everything will fit perfectly so that we can print the rest of the ball with it's the remaining parts and then I can switch to assemble mode! 😎
Stay tuned!