Now with the post machining operations complete (disassembly, stator, rotor, internal gear), I used all the plastic printed pieces to put together a fit test article.  I wanted to use this to verify that all the pieces would not interfere and would function correctly and had an outside hope that the result would be functional.

After getting everything wired up and mechanically assembled, next was zeroing all the encoders and doing the first position control.  I discovered a number of problems that turned up by having a full 12 servos on the bus at the same time, which were resolved pretty easily, as well as many more pain points which I’ll need to address.

But, here is the pretty video (it ends when I push down enough to over-current my lab supply):

Once all the individual legs were assembled, I needed to wire them up into the chassis.  Part of that was building the necessary data harnesses and actually running the power wires from the junction board.

Next up is getting everything talking.

Last time we had a dozen motors, controllers, and brackets assembled.  In this installment we’ll build up the mammal legs.

First is mounting the upper leg and upper pulley on each motor and assembling the lower leg:

Then we stick the upper leg, pulley, and lateral motor together, leaving the lower leg loose:

Now that I have all the parts in hand, and all the controllers populated, it is time to start the big build!

First up was installing magnets on all the motors:

Next up is mounting the motors into the brackets:

Then I soldered the phase wires onto each of the motors, including shortening the BE8108 wires:

I am a big fan of MacroFab.  They’ve built a PCB + assembly + more service that is transparent, high quality, and nearly completely self service.  They appear to be making money, so hopefully they will stay in business for some time.

On top of that, they offer a “quick turn” option which gives you populated boards shipped 10 business days after you order them (and I’ve even had them ship out a few days early from time to time)!  The only annoyance is that the quick turn option is limited, as I’ve mentioned before, to boards that meet certain criteria, among them having 20 or fewer items on the bill of materials.  To try and get this first quadruped prototype up and running quickly, I’ve been exclusively relying on quick turn boards, which means making some compromises.  Even after some moderate design sacrifices, I haven’t been able to get the servo controller board to 20 parts.  At the moment it is 23.  Thus, when I received the first big-ish PCB order I’ve made (qty 28), I got to spend a morning populating the remaining 3 components on all 28 boards.