I'm back!

I've completed the CNC conversion of my mill and have it sitting on my work bench. This means:

1. I can work on CNC in A/C comfort versus the garage
2. I have to be very mindful of "dust" on whatever I mill so I have only played with engraving wood
3. I need to make an enclosure so I can keep it in the house

I am working with a new group of students from the university. They are motivated, bt they are also 17 and 18hours this semester ... we'll see how it goes but I am positive that they will have a mobile platform by December.

As for me, I need/want to improve my robot speed/positioning. My encoders are 1000PPR, If I can double, triple, or sextuple that I can increase my accuracy. I'm looking at replacing my motors and encoders with some new ones. The encoder will be mounted on the motor and I calculate 6000PPR with them. As a bonus they have a higher output RPM. The con is that they are 7.2V motors and my Lipo is 14V. I can control the peak voltage via PWM so it's not that big a concern. The other con is cost. We are talking $94.

I need to post a video of what my robot looks like now. It's been a while, but I wrote a program the takes input variables for side length and number of verticies. It then commands the robot to draw that shape based on the calculated angles and distances. It works ok, but one motor always lags the other. My peak speed is 20 ticks for the PID time period I chose (20ms IIRC). This means I can command the robot to go 0 to 20 ticks. This is too small of a range. With the new motors, the range would be 0 to 120.

Onward,
Jay