Week of 3/31/25

This week I focused on some small tweaks and design changes for my balancing rig before I start assembling everything. First, I had to get my brushless motors working again, as I hadn't used them in some time. I had to do some work fixing the ESCs for the motors, and assembling the circuit on a breadboard again. Once I finished that, I moved on to some tweaks with my chassis design. First, I had to redesign the pegs that fasten the gimbals to the body of the train. The ones I have currently have are too short, which I realized when I attached the pegs to the servo. The hole where the lever attaches to the peg is too close to the center, meaning it can't overpower gravity to turn the gimbal back upright. The solution to this is to simply make a new design that places the mounting hole higher up.

<- Old design

New design ->

Old peg design on the chassis

I also continued working on fixing my flywheels, which has been a major problem since the start of this project. Instead of using math to measure the flywheel's center, I decided to 3d print a socket that the flywheels would slide into. The socket has the hole positions in the exact right spot, and I can use it as a guide to drill into the flywheel.

Lastly, I finished the design for the actuator arm that connects the servo motor to the gimbals. The actuator locks the servo and gimbal's position, allowing the servo to control the gimbals' position, which will be determined by my PD loop, when I eventually implement it.