So now the design philosophy is sorted, I have now acquired some HDPE from a sustainable/ recycled source and can start cutting it to shape.

After much whittling over what tools to use, knives turned out to be slow and occaisionally painful. Power tools are much better but obviously I have to be careful how to cut the chassis into shape. The chassis and the armour will essentially be one and the same for the purposes of this antweight. Come to think of it, most antweights have a chassis/armour combo that are very similar! Anyway… I don’t have access to a cutter in Yorkshire (I have one in ARC’s workshop down south but I haven’t been in a while) so I’ve had to improvise a little bit. The trouble of now using precision tools is that you sometimes end up with some less than perfect pieces, although in my case that shouldn’t matter too much as only the wheels and a bit of the chassis should actually make contact with most of my opponents…

As I came to put all of the chassis together, the thought occurred to me that having the battery off-centre puts most of the weight in one direction. Should I change my chassis shape to a cross to compensate for this (the motors as arms with the battery as the central part)?? I could do, but for now I think I will continue with my standard wedge-type shape as proof of concept, but the more I think about the weight ratios the more I am considering using the different shape for the second iteration of Twisted Nipplenuts. This may also reduce the overall amount of armour needed but I haven’t done any calculations yet. I may also switch to a different material for at least part of the chassis to maximise my ground clearance and to save weight, although this may cost a bit. C’est la vie.

That said, building the chassis has been quite fun, the workarounds for making the chassis have been less so but I have at least now got the shell ready!

I would also like to give a shout out to Leeds Model Shop who have been a n invaluable source of materials and tools during this build! If you are in the area go visit – I managed to source some very reasonable M2 nuts and bolts from them. See more of their stock here:
http://www.modelshopleeds.co.uk/catalog/index.php .

Next time – the electrics!

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