Thoughtophone

I figured it must be possible to drill accurate enough holes for my purposes using a drill stand, so I bought one that includes a vice, for £30. Here it is at Amazon , although I bought at Machine Mart, where it was cheaper. I have a cordless drill and an SDS drill. Only the SDS one has a collar, and it's hardly going to be very accurate, so I need a new drill as well. According to my reading, high drill speed is good for aluminium, so I wanted a fast drill. Claims of accuracy and speed control for greater versatility were highly regarded, so I ended up going with a Bosch GBM 6 RE . It ticks all the boxes, and is one of the few drills on the market that doesn't have hammer or impact actions to complicate things. I'll try and rig something up to measure the accuracy of this arrangement and post about it later. I don't expect to be able to try it out until next weekend. Update: see  this post .

So I had a go at drilling holes in my aluminium section. They needed to be 5mm for the pillow blocks I bought. I've got a dremel drill press. It handles bits up to 2mm and vibrates so spectacularly anyway that I gave up on it immediately. That left me with my trusty cordless drill. I used an automatic punch to get started, but couldn't get the bit to stay put, even with a 2mm pilot. This is going to be a bit of a problem: positioning the bearings in-line is rather important. I'd love to buy a mini drill press or milling machine, but it's a little hard to justify, because I have limited storage space, let a lone a bench to attach it to, which would make it unlikely I'd get it out and use it much. London Hackspace have a small milling machine . Perhaps I should join. They look a lot better organised in their new premises. Anyway, on my travels I found IXI-Devices . They might solve my problem in several ways: They have pre drilled aluminium angles and stips. T

The Electric Gerbil is powered by two Tamiya 70103 Universal Gearbox kits. Here's a picture with dimensions, which is more for my reference than anything else: They were cheap, but I now realise, are hard to get hold of in the UK. The motors are 3V. That's probably about right: I'm using 3AA batteries as power, and there's some voltage loss in the controller. I haven't bothered to find out how much. You can also get alternative 6V motors to fit in this gearbox, which I have bought for the princely sum of £1.20 each. I can try that if the current arrangement doesn't work out. I've also bought 4 of these: Pillow Blocks , and a 30mm aluminium L-Profile to mount them on, the idea being that the profile will make it easy to line up the bearings, and keep everything very rigid. I'm about to go and cut a couple of pieces, and drill them if I have time. The gearboxes have a few different axle configurations, which you can't really see here: That

I'm building a robot - one of these ball robots that seem popular at the moment. I've actually experimented quite a bit already. I found this project , which I like, because it allows the robot to spin on the spot. I have in mind that this might be an entertaining toy for a child. I also like the idea you can kick it! It's called Kickbot. Anyway, I've got something that works mechanically, up to a point: it rolls along a bit jerkily, and spins around very nicely indeed! There are a few problems to solve: The jerky movement, and the overall strength. I need some way to link the two axles into a single, non bending axle. I also suspect I need something like Kickbot's hubs. I don't have a way to machine parts however. I had thought I might buy an aluminium tube with an internal diameter matching the a set of bearings, then push the bearings in. I need one at each end, and two in the middle. This has the advantage that the bearings will be well aligned, and th