Fling!

Fling is my new 3 lber, more commonly known as a beetle weight. I already have the entire design and most of the parts, so, it IS going to happen. I swear it. Most importantly, it will require little if any machining, so, I can do it all myself, without Mike's help.

As you may have geussed, Fling! is a flip bot, in this case spring powered. My plan is to load the springs via a small drill motor which I discovered to have very good properties. The Durapro 4.8V drill runs at 250 RPM, with 35 in/lbs torque. I will gear this down somewhere in the range of 4 to 1, giving me about 140 in/lbs torque. Since at the end of a 4" arm, a beetle requires 12 lbs force to lift it, I'd imagine if I put about 100 in/lbs force into it, it should fly pretty well. A sketch of the bot and the launch platform draw mechanisim is shown below. Note that the platform draw mechanisim is more or less copied from Mangle-Gore's hammer, and may have to be changed, if he does not want me to use his design.


	Fling! Fling is my new 3 lber, more commonly known as a beetle weight. I already have the entire design and most of the parts, so, it IS going to happen. I swear it. Most importantly, it will require little if any machining, so, I can do it all myself, without Mike's help. As you may have geussed, Fling! is a flip bot, in this case spring powered. My plan is to load the springs via a small drill motor which I discovered to have very good properties. The Durapro 4.8V drill runs at 250 RPM, with 35 in/lbs torque. I will gear this down somewhere in the range of 4 to 1, giving me about 140 in/lbs torque. Since at the end of a 4" arm, a beetle requires 12 lbs force to lift it, I'd imagine if I put about 100 in/lbs force into it, it should fly pretty well. A sketch of the bot and the launch platform draw mechanisim is shown below. Note that the platform draw mechanisim is more or less copied from Mangle-Gore's hammer, and may have to be changed, if he does not want me to use his design.