December 4, 2006 update:

Well, I received the gears and wheels that I ordered. The wheels from www.budgetrobotics.com are great.

I used to be fairly proficient with my Taig microlathe, but not Sunday. The gears are bored for .25” (1/4”) but the shaft diameter on the motors is .234”. I decide to make an adapter that would fit better on the shaft and integrate with the wheels and gears. I tried to use some Fortal aluminum, but it wasn’t cutting as well as I had remembered. It took my quite an effort to hacksaw a chunk to chuck in the lathe, and then it kept bogging down on anything but light cuts. It would have taken a day for one adapter to whittle 1.5” down to .375”. So I switched to nylon. All told it took 5 hours to crank out one adapter.

The good news is it works great; the bad news is I have 1 more to make. I’ll post a photo tonight.


Onwards,
Jay