"Nano" Project Page
Click on pictures!
08/23/03
How It Looks Today!
Here is
a picture of my nano-sumo geartrain in
it's present form. It takes some imagination and confidence, but when I
look into this drawer, I see all kinds of possibilities! You gotta have faith
to tackle a project like this. Notice I've got all the right tools!. You can get those BIG parts into SMALL places with tools like
that! I should be combat ready in no time at all!
08/26/03
My first step backwards!
Reading
on the MegaBitty message board, I heard talk of using the geartrain out of those
little Rat Shack Zip-Zap type cars. I thought if I used those parts, maybe
it would be cheap and easy for me and anyone else that wanted to duplicate what
I did. They sell a car upgrade kit with gears and motors for something
like $6.95 so you don't even have to buy the cars. Wow! What a
deal! The first thing that you realize you didn't realize is that the
motors are an "upgrade" to make the car run faster. What that
translates into is a motor that draws a lot more power and provides speed you
really don't want. Not a problem! I found a friend that had the
little cars and traded him my "hot" motors for his "stock"
ones. We both walked away happy and I figured I had all my problems
solved! Then I started looking closer at the gears. Not bad looking
gears, but a mix, match, and mounting problem for sure. There doesn't seem
to be enough of any one thing to get much done. Also, the gears are very
small with big teeth so you don't get much of a reduction ratio out of
them. To get something that you could actually use, especially with the
hot motors, would probably require multiple kits and leave you holding a lot of
useless parts. I'm not saying you couldn't do it. But in the final
analysis, I decided that a replacement set of servo gears would probably work
better and cost a lot less. At least in a servo set, all the gears are
made to work together! I decided to jump ship and start over! Hey...
I always wanted some little motors for a BEAM bot anyway!
Sorry guys! Just got in a really bad wreck and this project (and
everything else) is on hold for a while. I'll get back to this when I can. ...JOHN