FPV-Rover 2.0 Has 3D Printed Treads And Plenty Of Zip

June 17, 2018 by Al Williams 11 Comments

[Markus_p] has already finished one really successful 3D printed tracked robot build. Now he’s finished a second one using standard motors and incorporating what he learned from the first. The results are pretty impressive and you can see a video demo of the beast, below.

Most of the robot is PLA, although there are some parts that use PETG and flex plastic. There is an infrared-capable camera up front and another regular camera on the rear. All the electronics are pretty much off the shelf modules like an FPV transmitter and an electronic controller for the motors. There’s a servo to tilt the camera, as you can see in the second video.

The body fits together using nuts and magnets. The robot in the video takes a good beating and doesn’t seem to fall apart so it must be sufficient. What appealed to us was the size of the thing. It looks like it would be trivially easy to mount some processing power inside or on top of the rover and it could make a great motion base for a more sophisticated robot.

We’ve seen some similar projects, of course. This tracked robot uses mind control. And OpenWheel is a great place to get treads and other locomotion designs.

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3D Printed Tank Has Slick Tread Design

June 2, 2018 by Donald Papp 4 Comments

Tank projects are great because while every tank design is the same in a fundamental way, there’s nevertheless endless variety in the execution and results. [Hoo Jian Li]’s 3D Printed Tank is smartly laid out and has an unusual tank tread that shows off some slick curves.

The tank itself is remotely controlled over Bluetooth with a custom controller that uses the common HC-05 Bluetooth radio units. The treads are driven by four hobby gearmotors with custom designed wheels, and run over an idler wheel in the center of the body. There isn’t any method of taking up slack in the track and a ripple in the top surface of the track is visible as it drives, but the tank is small enough that it doesn’t seem to mind much. STL files and source code is available on GitHub; unfortunately the repository lacks a wiring diagram but between the low component count, photos, and source code that’s not a show-stopper.