Racing Power Wheels Part 2: Axle, Rear Wheels, Brakes, and Sprockets

We're currently waiting for the motor and batteries to still arrive here at Boca Bearings.The motor I had first ordered, the 24 Volt 650 Watt motor kit, is currently out of stock at the time until March. So we quickly decided to select another motor kit. We decided to go with the 36V 1000W motor kit. http://www.monsterscooterparts.com/36-volt-1000-watt-motor-controller-throttle-kit-standard.html

This motor kit draws about the same amount of current as the 24V 650W motor kit. From the equation P = I*V, the 36V motor draws about 27.8 amps while the 24V motor was going to draw about 27.1 amps. So I expect similar run times except that the 36V motor will require 3 12V batteries to run it. So this changes the amount of what we have spent into the $500 limit. This kit runs for $179.99 and the batteries we have chosen was the 12V 18Ah batteries http://www.monsterscooterparts.com/gr12vo18amph.html. We had ordered 24V battery packs that was intended for the 24V motor kit. The 24V battery packs go for $109.99. So one and a half of those packs would go for about $165. Only half of the cost of the batteries goes towards the $500 limit. So right now we are currently at $262.50. So that gives us a less amount of money to go towards the rest of the build, $237.50. At the time of ordering, I forget to consider the increase of cost of the batteries. But I'll try to work with what I got.

In the meantime, research on axles was being done. For go karts, there are primarily 2 types of axles: a dead (fixed) axle and a live axle. For this project I will be going with a live axle. A dead axle is an axle where only one rear wheel will be driven by the motor. A live axle is an axle that will go from one rear wheel to the other. A dead axle might be cheaper to make instead of the live axle. For now, I will try to do this project with a live axle and see if I can maintain to be within the $500 budget. 

Axles
So there are many options out there to be able to make a live axle for a go kart or for this modified Power Wheels project. I am planning on just getting rid of the whole rear end of the power wheels and just keep the metal frame. I will keep the plastics that rest on top of the existing motors and figure out how to mount them on again later on. I will need to check underneath the plastics to see if there is any sort of metal connection between the two running square tubing going from the front to the back. If not, then I will need to either weld/bolt on an additional square tubing between the two square tubing running from the front to the back.

3D Printed Robotic Hand: Part 8--The Wiring Diagram of the Hand and Codes for Adafruit Servo Shield

So in this post I will be going over the wiring of the 3D printed Inmoov hand and include images of the wiring with the use of the program Fritzing since I did not really go into detail of how I wired the hand when using it without the Adafruit Servo shield. To me, Fritzing is a very useful program that includes many popular boards and components to be able to recreate a wiring layout. Again, this wiring is set up to be used without the Adafruit Servo shield. Doing this can help reduce costs of the project. I will also be covering the codes that I did use when I was trying to use the Adafruit Servo shield. 

The Wiring of the Inmoov Hand

So I did not really go into detail on how to wire the robotic hand. This wiring setup is meant to be used without the Servo shield from Adafruit. It will just rely on the use of the Servo library of the Arduino IDE. Using the Adafruit Servo shield will require a different wiring setup.

The above image is the wiring diagrm of the Inmoov hand. The five servos are powered by an external supply, the 4 AA batteries. The 4AA batteries should should supply enough power to the servos. The battery power supply is connected to the power rails that is found on the top of the breadboard. The ground of the batteries is connected to the blue rail while the power (positive) of the batteries is connected to the rail next to the red line on the breadboard. The blue rail is the ground rail while the red rail is the power rail.

Racing Power Wheels Part 1: The Dune Racer and Motor Kit Selection

The next project for Boca Bearings will be to make a regular Power Wheels into a Racing Power Wheels to participate in the Power Racing Series. The Power Racing Series is a series of races where teams race each other with power wheels that they have modified to go much faster than their stock speed. The series also includes an endurance race of 75 minutes. It's a series where people can learn new things and skills and to simply have fun.

For this project, we've searched Craigslist until we've found a Power Wheels that we thought was best for the project. A used Power Wheels was desired since we are going to mostly just keep the plastic covering of the Power Wheels and not use the stock motor or throttle. The Power Wheels we ended up going with is the Power Wheels Dune Racer.