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Unread 30-04-2014, 14:30
philso philso is offline
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Re: Butterfly/ octocanum drives

We built an octanum system without regular access to CNC equipment. I do not recommend doing that unless you have an experienced machinist guiding the manufacturing effort and making sure the parts are being made accurately and consistently.

There are similarities and differences between our modules and the modules that 148 used. Both our modules used one of the axles in each module as the "pivot axle" for the module to move up and down.

In our modules, the pivot axle was a live axle making it necessary to install bearings in the chassis to hold the axle. We also had bearings on the side plates of the module.

In 148's module, the pivot axle was a dead axle so the wheel on that axle had bearings in it. Their module side plates had bearing just like ours. Their pivot axle was screwed into the chassis with a 1/4-20 bolt at each end.

I think our modules had the same number of major parts as 148's modules so the complexity was similar. The big difference was manufacturability and serviceability. Our modules could only be partially assembled before installation. We had to insert the pivot axle, it's bearings, the wheel and all the spacers while it was in the chassis. It took a lot of time and effort to make any changes to the module. 148's could be fully assembled on the workbench and installed into the chassis by screwing in the two 1/4-20 bolts.