TPC History - Part II
The Badger prototype was fun to drive around. It took alot of punishment...including flying off of two garage doors propped on a boat trailer...and just kept running. We did have some minor difficulties with the drive train, like throwing chains off the small sprockets. Overall, we were very pleased with the performance and ready to move on to the next step.
But we ran into MAJOR problems when working on the weight calculations. We wanted to determine the approximate weight of the robot before we cut any metal. We just couldn't figure out a way to build the Badger for less than 250 pounds!
Time for a radical redesign....
One of Matt's original design ideas was for a spinning drum weapon. When we decided to redesign the robot, we went back to the drum. We found a gearhead from Thomsom Industries that would eliminate the huge 72 tooth sprocket, allowing us to shrink the robot's height by several inches. We dubbed the robot Sewer Snake, the affectionate term for one of Matt's favorite pieces of plumbing equipment.
