No, it's not a pon-"cho"

Hey everyone! I have a bit of a knitting saga to share if you're interested...

So, last March or so I ordered this yarn (in the "ginger" color) with the intention of knitting this sweater. Awesome, right? I received my yarn and began kniting. However, then we bought a house and moved and began rebuilding said house. And, as you might imagine, knitting rather fell by the wayside. Now fast forward to mid-August when I decided that I might as well continue doing my hobbies while renovating the house since it was, apparently, going to take forever. I took up the sweater where I left off and merrily continued knitting. Around this time, I also started attending a Thursday night knitting group. It turns out you pick up so many things at a knitting group! Like, did you know that you can actually try on your sweater while you're still knitting it? I had no idea! You take it off the needles and put your active stitches on a long piece of yarn instead. Then it's not constrained by the needles and you can put it on like you will be able to when it's done. Well, I thought this was genious and tried on my sweater which, remember, is basically 4 inches from being complete. You've probably figured out by now that all was not well. The bottom of the sweater fit great! Like a glove! The top part fit like I was supposed to put football pads on under it. Seriously, had it not been attached to the bottom part, I could have passed the top part of the sweater all the way over my body from head to feet without touching myself with it...it was like a knit hula hoop. There was really no way to fix it and I SWORE I had followed the pattern correctly so, angrily, I ripped it all out and re-balled up the yarn.


Thus began my quest for something else to do with my pretty cotton yarn. Of course, by now it is October so knitting with cotton is maybe not the best idea. October is wool time. Nevertheless, I was bound and determined to use this yarn for SOMETHING. So I found this pattern. Pretty! Also, the fact that it is a pon-chette (not a pon-cho, goodness no, how uncouth!) made me laugh every time I got to say it. So, I began knitting. I was putting the trauma of the football-player-shoulder sweater behind me. The healing had begun.

Until...a week after I began knitting the pon-chette I got an email from the company from which I bought the pattern.

We have become aware of some errors in our Empress Pullover pattern, item
50642. Since the errors were scattered throughout the pattern, we are sending
you a link to a brand new, corrected version of the pattern.

Ya think?! URGH. So, anyway, I finished my pon-chette and it turned out awesome!




So now I have to decide if I want to bother with the dumb sweater again. Maybe next spring....

Fun with Yarn! Thanks, Mom!

For Christmas this year, my mom gave me an umbrella swift and ball winder. What on earth are those things and why would anyone want them, you ask? Well! I have pictures to explain. *Ahem* (adjusts glasses).

Lots of yarn comes in skeins, not balls:


When you unwind that thing it looks like this:


If you try to use that to knit with, you will end up with a giant tangled mess in about three seconds flat. I know because that's what happened the first time I bought yarn in this format. It was very bad. In order to do any knitting, you first have to wind this into a ball. A really cool way to do this is to wind a center-pull ball, so that when you pull yarn out, the ball doesn't bounce around...the yarn just pulls out of the middle. One way to do this is by putting the yarn around your knees and winding it by hand. This takes about 10 minutes per skein, though, and some projects use many skeins. The top I knitted last summer, for example, used eight skeins. If what you really want to do is knit, winding balls gets boring really fast. So....you can use a ball winder and umbrella swift instead!


The umbrella swift is the big thing on the left that looks like a...well...an umbrella. That holds the yarn. The little thing on the right is the ball winder. It winds the yarn into a center-pull ball. Check it out:




Isn't that nifty? This is what you end up with:



Now I can knit with impunity! :) Thanks, Mom!

Half as Much Effort

If I put half as much thought and effort into my job as I do into whatever my current hobby, sport, or other addiction is, I'd be one of the most productive people at the lab. 

Cephalopods + Yarn = Fun

Lookie what I made! His legs are poseable! How cool is that?


Here he is about to attack my sunglasses, for scale...


I cannot take credit for the pattern...I bought it along with a few others here on Etsy and they were well worth the few dollars each. Her patterns are very easy to understand...lots of illustrations and explanations of abbreviations and techniques. I'd say that if you can knit socks using double-pointed needles, you can knit one of these little guys. I also made the elephant, and it was about the same difficulty level.

Knitting Update

Well, here is my promised update on my knitting projects. In getting the pictures ready for this post, I realized that I have done quite a lot of knitting recently! Here are some of my favorite recent projects:

Baby Booties


Two of my friends have had baby boys recently, so I made two pairs of these adorable baby booties. Seriously, could these honestly be any cuter? I think not. I also made a matching hat for one of them. The other got this toy elephant that I knitted. It was kind of a challenge, but it turned out really well. I was quite proud, but stupidly did not take a picture of it before sending it off to the recipient. Oh well!

The Purple Sweater



I started knitting this and it was going so well! I had finished all the pieces, blocked them, I had sewn the front and back together and knitted the collar. Then I went to sew on the sleeves, and I made a small mistake. The sleeve was on kind of crooked. No big deal! I lifted up the piece of yarn I had used to sew the sleeve on and snipped it, causing the sleeve to come off neatly so I could do it again. Except...that's not at all what happened. The front and the sleeve started to unravel! I had snipped the WRONG PIECE OF YARN. I am still really annoyed with myself about this, so I have not yet gone back to fix it. I'm warming up to the idea, but now it's spring and I won't get to wear it until next year. FRUSTRATING. Honestly, though, it shouldn't be such a big deal. It is knitted with really chunky yarn, so it knits up very quickly. Also, I get to use these giant needles that make me feel like a tiny child. Check it out:


What on earth is this thing? It smells like a knitting needle, but it's WAY TOO BIG to be that!

The Shawl


I began knitting this for my grandmother, but now I'm worried that the colors aren't her at all. When it was not yet knitted, the yarn looked like it had lots more green in it, but now it seems mostly yellow. Oh well...I guess we'll see what she thinks. This project suffered from a minor setback, too. At some point I actually looked at my work and I realized that I had switched sides at some point. What I mean is that there is a front and a back to this garment (one side looks like it's inside out), and halfway through I had switched, so both sides had, well, both sides on them. It was not good. So, I had to un-knit about half of it (why couldn't I have noticed earlier? *sigh*). I managed to salvage some of my work, though, which was good. This is a lot of the same stitch over and over, though, so I took a short break and I am now working on this:

My First Socks!


Check it out! I have one and a ...uh...third?...socks! Socks are kind of a big deal among knitters. Everyone seems to think they're really hard to do, but after you have knitted a small toy elephant, socks are not so big and bad. I have enjoyed knitting these...the contrast from the sweater is pretty funny. If it felt like I was knitting with railroad ties on that project, these needles feel like toothpics!

Anyway, that's all I have for now. I think I might try to knit some more exciting socks next time...some kind of fancy pattern, maybe. I have decided that I like socks!

How-To: Nitro-to-Brushless Conversion: Part 6

Part 5 can be found here.

OK, this post isn't so much a how-to as an update on a previous how-to, but I feel that keeping the title consistent is important.

I've been quite happy with the performance of my brushless-powered Losi 8IGHT, but I couldn't resist tweaking it a bit. Below is a list of some of the changes I've made since my last post, several of which were predicted therein. Most of these changes are clearly visible in the photos that follow the list.

• I successfully tamed the motor braking. The car still stops quickly, but it's more controllable, and now I don't feel like I'm going to damage the motor every time I slow down. I really would have liked to use the disk brakes that came with the kit, but there just wasn't room for the servo required to operate them.
• I've replaced the batteries and speed-control's Dean's connectors with 5.5-mm bullet connectors. The bullets will have lower resistance at high currents. This higher conductance is important, since I expect to draw close to 200 amps for short periods.
• I added a second temperature sensor, this one is thermal-epoxied directly to the motor. Now I can monitor the temps of both the motor controller and the motor. I've found that both temperatures mostly stay below 130 degrees F, which makes me feel confident that I'm damaging neither component.
• I've replaced the single battery tray with 2 smaller ones, which allows me to hold 2 6300-mAh 2-series LiPo batteries. I've soldered the batts together in series, giving me a 4-series LiPo with 26% more capacity than my single 5000-mAh batt. This change should not only give me longer runtimes, but also higher currents and thus more power. Additionally, the new setup creates an almost perfect left-right weight balance. As a bonus, the new battery configuration also fills previously unused space on the left side of the car, making it look a little more efficiently laid out..
• I've mounted some Pro-Line Moab tires on orange Kyosho 10-spoke wheels, which are visible in the first pic. The tread on these tires has a good multi-purpose pattern, useful for on- and off-road driving. Additionally, these tires have transverse ribs on the inside, which helps prevent them from ballooning at high wheel speeds. Not only will these ribs keep more tire in contact with the ground, but they will also keep the tires glued to the rims. The wheels, by the way, are probably my favorite 1/8th buggy wheels; they are both well made and attractive.
  
• Speaking of tires, I also found some GRP Rally tires, which I mounted on orange Kyosho 5-slot dish wheels. These wheels and tires are visible in the second pic. In addition to being made of a surprisingly sticky compound, these tires have an extremely low profile, which not only keeps them from ballooning, but also reduces side-wall flex during corning. They don't absorb jump-landing impact as well as higher-profile tires, but that seems like a good trade-off, given that they are intended for on-road use. The major downfall of the tires is their outside diameter; they not only look too small on the vehicle, they also necessitate a significant gearing change. I'd really prefer tires with the same profile mounted on wheels about 10 mm larger in diameter. The wheels, meanwhile, aren't as attractive as the 10-spokers, in my opinion, but they do give the car a somewhat futuristic look, which I find pleasing. I think they certainly look better than the stock dish wheels. (These wheels actually look quite a lot like the wheels that come stock on the Honda Civic Hybrid, which, being a hybrid, is meant to look all future-y.)
  
• Gearing is, of course, determined by terrain, but I've been running mostly 15/39 on the road and 14/39 or 13/39 off. It's much easier to change the pinion gear (mounted on the motor shaft) than the spur gear (mounted on the center differential and holding the viscous silicone fluid therein at bay).
• Since my electrified car is heavier than the stock nitro version, especially with the larger batts, I've stiffened the suspension, cranking up the front and rear spring rate by 14% and 19%, respectively. I also increased the damping concomitantly. The suspension is now set to something much closer to the truggy version of my buggy.
  
• I've replaced the stock plastic steering knuckles (axle carriers), servo-saver arm, and servo arm, with their hard-anodized aluminum counterparts. This change should rigidify the entire steering system, resulting in better steering in high-speed situations with only a slight weight penalty. Several other hard-ano aluminum parts are available for the 8IGHT, but I'm not convinced that they offer improved performance or that, if they do, said improvement justifies the additional weight and cost. Incidentally, only the servo arm is visible in the first photo.
  
• I've also purchased a Pro-Line Crowd Pleazer 2.0 body, which I've painted almost identically to its stock counterpart. I don't think I like the CP2 as well as I do the stock body. I'll put up a pic later and let you be the judge.
• I haven't had a chance to measure the top speed of the vehicle to see if the larger battery and taller gearing had an effect. Certainly the car seems fast enough, and the acceleration is more than sufficient for my purposes.

Effect an Effect

I've been trying to post a higher percentage of original content, rather than simple links-with-comments, but I can't pass up linking to the latest xkcd comic. As a budding grammar Nazi, I find that this comic effects great amusement.

How Time Flies...

Wow! It has been a long time since I have put up a blog entry. I fully plan to explain my absence, and I have pictures to prove that I was being productive while not blogging. I swear!

Part of the reason I have not been blogging much recently is that I have been very excited about my various knitting projects. Check it out: this is my very first sweater! It was pretty easy (not a lot of shaping or sizing involved), but I'm still proud. I have worn it several times and have gotten several compliments on it, which is pretty cool when you made something yourself.

There is actually no clasp or button built into the sweater; you just hold it together with a pretty pin/brooch of your choice. If anyone is interested, I found the pattern here.

I also recently finished a scarf that I'm really excited to wear. I saw this yarn and really loved it, but couldn't find a cool enough pattern to use it on for quite a while. Then I happened upon this pattern that someone used for the same brand of yarn and voila! I was set. Here is my completed version. I added tassels because I just think it's more fun that way...but looking at the pictures maybe I need to trim them to be all the same length. Hmm....


Please also note the dog in this picture (and all of the following pictures). It was a fine art to tell him "No! Leave it!" and then snap the picture before his self-control entirely melted away under the temptation of yummy, fuzzy, chewable yarn.

I also finished a dog (um, I mean, cat, a cat sweater) for Crazy Aunt Purl's Druken Cat Sweater Sweepstakes. Newton was nice enough to model my dog (oops, I mean CAT) sweater for me.


How cute is that? Michael says it makes him look like a little old man (Is it cold in here? Turn up the heat! *waves cane in the air*) I adapted the pattern from this one using more dignified colors since the poor doggie in that picture looks like an ad for his local gay pride parade, and he doesn't seem particularly happy about it. This was kind of a cool intro to knitting with different colors, which led me to try this pattern, which was featured in my latest Craft magazine that came in the mail.


I'll give you three guesses as to what it's supposed to say when it's done. I'm doing this one a little at a time because what I have now learned from doing the striped pattern and then moving on to this one is that knitting in large blocks of colors (like stripes) is kind of fun and interesting, but knitting detailed color patterns where you switch colors often (like letters) is a major pain in the ass. I think I'll be working on this one a little at a time for a while....and then I may not do a lot of color stuff for some time.

Meanwhile, I have also started working on this pattern for a knitting bag. I plan to give this one to a fellow knitter for Christmas. Here is half of the bag...


That is one side of the bag plus one handle. The pattern is kind of cool because, as you can see if you click on the link above, the finished bag leaves the needles in at the end (as you can see I have done here) to form some structure at the top. That needle is just one of a cheap pair I have that I'm using as a place-holder. Once I block the bag (which involves getting it wet, hence the cheap plastic needles) I'll find a pretty pair of decorative needles to use instead.

So, there you have it! That's what I have been up to lately. Um, ok, fine, that and playing Scrabble on the computer. Oh, and working. I swear I have gotten some work done in there somewhere, too! Now,if it would just hurry up and get cooler outside I could start to wear all of my fun new knitted items! Hear that Mother Nature? Hurry up with the fall already! I can just see myself in my new scarf sipping hot apple cider and eating some kind of baked good containing pumpkin....mmm...

Light Activity is Good For You, Right?

I apologize, gentle reader for the lack of activity on the blog lately. I have five different hobby projects going on at home, plus all my CrossFitting. Oh, and I've been busy at work, too; it's the end of the fiscal year. I'm hoping to put up some more posts in the near future. Thank you, gentle reader, for your patience.

Two great tastes....etc...

As you all know, Michael is into RC cars. Also, Michael and I are into our dog, Newton. I suppose it was only a matter of time before Michael combined these two interests into one fun activity. Check it out:

How-To: Nitro-to-Brushless Conversion: Part 5

Part 4 can be found here.

We have finally arrived at perhaps the most interesting part of this how-to on the conversion of a Losi 8IGHT 1/8th-scale buggy from nitro to brushless/LiPo power: the installation of the motor, battery, ESC, and supporting components.

Here are a pair photos of the completed car without the body or battery:


This photo shows the 5000-mA-hr battery in place:


You can see a few important aspect of the car's construction from these pics:

• I've put everything except the battery on the right side of the car or along the centerline. Id did so because, as I said, the battery is quite heavy. With the 5-A-hr battery shown, the weight is distributed slightly to the right, but with the larger 8-A-hr battery, the left tires carry more weight so I think my arrangement is a pretty fair compromise.
• You may also be able to make out the custom speed-control mount/heatsink that I bent and cut out of 5052 (bendable) aluminum. I'm quite pleased with it; it places the ESC near the centerline of the vehicle and keeps the ESC running cool.
• The little circuit board thermal-epoxied to the top of the ESC is a temperature sensor. I plan to put another on the motor. Since the transceiver and servo run off a 5-V voltage regulator, I added a voltage sensor---really just a pair of wires with a Rx/servo connector on the end to the setup. You can see the leads disapearing into the ESC's input connectors in the photos.
• I've dispensed with the front and read disc brakes, which normally sit just ahead of and just behind the center differential. Instead, I'm relying on motor braking. It seems to me that disk brakes are more efficient, from a current-draw standpoint, but I just didn't have room for the servo that would actuate them.
• As I mentioned last time, I had to grind the motor/diff mount down to fit under the body. (The part was actually made to fit the Losi 8IGHT-T truggy.)
  
• Those of you who know me are aware of the significance of the number I've chosen to place on the wing.

Here're a few photographs of the car with the body on. I'm very pleased with this particular color scheme. It addition to being attractive---at least, in my opinion, which is the only one that matters---it has proven itself to be quite visible from distance. Incidentally, I wonder if Lokai and Bele could find common ground by agreeing on the virtues of this paint job.


Next: some shots of the car with road tires---Pro-Line Road Rages---mounted in place of the dirt-track tires---Pro-Line Crime Fighters¹ ---shown above. I also purchased some extra-knobby all-terrain tires---Pro-Line Badlands---for more rugged surfaces.

This last photograph shows how I measured the weight distribution. Yes, those are season box sets of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. And yes, that is the second Trek reference in this post, but I'm not some kind of raging Trekkie; these boxes were the first objects I could find that are all the same thickness, and very close to the thickness of the scale.


At this point, the conversion is done, and I'm quite please with the way it turned out. The car accelerates like nobody's business. The acceleration is far better than a nitro-powered buggy can produce, since nitro engines' torque peaks at many thousands of RPM, while the motor in my buggy produces full torque at zero speed. The vehicle also hits remarkably high speeds. I used Alisons GPS receiver² to measure the top speed to be 41.8 mi/hr with a 14/48 pinon/spur and the road tires. (This test was done on a straight, nearly flat strip of asphalt with nearly no wind.) Additionally, the buggy remains flat---doesn't roll---in corners, and it can be slid very dramatically on smooth pavement.

I only plan minor tweaks from here on out. Here are some of the changes I'd like to make, in approximate order of precedence:

• Adjust the motor braking. It's way too aggressive at the moment.
  
• Add a second temperature sensor to monitor the motor itself.
• Add another strap (or some other component) to the battery tray to hold the larger, 8000-mA-hr batteries in place securely and cleanly.
• Replace the Deans Ultra Plugs I have on the batteries and the input to the ESC with 5.5-mm bullet connectors, like I have on the motor and the ouput of the ESC. Deans aren't really meant to be used over 50 amperes, while the 5.5-mm bullets can be run up to 200 amps.
• Experiment with gearing. A simple pinion change to 15/48 should put the vehicle just under 45 mi/hr. If that doesn't hurt the low-end acceleration, I might go to 15/47. I suspect 15/48 will be close to the ideal gearing, though.
• Experiment with the suspension parameters. The setup suggested by the manual is pretty good, but I think I should stiffen it up a bit, since the car is a bit heavier than the nitro version.
  
• Possibly solder the ESC directly to the motor to reduce loss and improve reliability. I'm not sure if that step will be necessary.
  

I would be remiss if I failed to point out that I got a lot inspiration and information from the forum at RC-Monster. com. Users BrianG and glassdoctor, as well as Mike Cronin, who runs RC Monster, were especially helpful.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

¹ Pro-Line's tire names, especially those designed for off-road racing, have a criminal theme to them. I addition to the aforementioned Road Rage and Crime Fighter models, there are also the Cell Block, Mugshot, Inside Job, and Dirty Harry. It not clear to me whether the Knuckles model counts.
² We have named the device Garmin Tanzarian.

Part 6 can be found here.

How-To: Nitro-to-Brushless Conversion: Part 4

Part 3 can be found here.

After a couple-month-long hiatus, during which I pursued some of my other hobbies, I recently returned to working on the brushless conversion of my Losi 8IGHT 1/8th-scale buggy. And to posting about it on Industrial-Strength Science. This part of my how-to concerns selection of the electronics and associated parts for the vehicle.

The motive force for the car, and indeed the centerpiece of the conversion, will be a NeuMotors 1512/2.5D. All Neu's 1512 motors are rated at 1200 W of continuous power and 2500 W for 30 seconds. This particular motor has a Kv rating of 2000 RPM/V, which means that, with the nominal 14.8-V potential difference supplied by my batteries, it should spin up to 29,600 RPM. That should be fine, because the 1512s aren't meant to spin above 60,000 RPM. The manufacture claims that this motor is "86+" percent efficient. I'm not sure how they measure that---it seems to me the efficiency will vary strongly with voltage/current/speed---but the point is this motor is much more efficient than any brushed motor. Here's a photo of the Neu:


As I think I said before, a brushless motor running off a lithium-polymer battery is truly 2 great tastes that taste great together. The high efficiency of the BL motor combines with the high current capacity and low load-induced voltage drop of the LiPos to deliver lots of power to the wheels, propeller, or what have you. For now, I'll be running a MaxAmps pack consisting of 4 LiPo cells in series. Each cell has a nominal voltage of 3.7 V and a capacity of 5000 mA-hr, so this so-called 4s pack has nominal voltage of 14.8 V and a capacity of 5000 mA-hr; the capacities do not add. This pack is claimed to be capable of putting out constant currents of 20 C---that's 100 amps-for a 5-A-hr battery---and burst currents of 50 C---250 amps for 5-A-hr. The downside to this pack is that, even though LiPo cells have much higher specific capacity than nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal-hydride cells, this battery is just plane huge. You can't determine the size from this photo, but it will be apparent when I show it in place in the vehicle:


Because brushless motors have electronic, rather than mechanical comutation, a brushless-specific electronic speed control is required. I've chosen a Quark 125-B Monster Pro, which is claimed to be capable of sustained currents of 125 A and 10-second bursts of 180 A. Here's a pic:


The Quark ESC has a built-in "battery-eliminator circuit," which is simply a voltage regulator that allows you to pick off 5 or 6 V from the supplied higher voltage to run the receiver and servo, rather than including a small "receiver pack" battery to provide that lower voltage. This BEC is resistive and thus inefficient. In order to reduce power consumption, I'll be using a transitor-base switching regulator, which is more efficient. Here's a shot of this external BEC:


To disable the ESC's BEC, I simply cut the positive power lead coming off of it; since that BEC is resistive, I believe that mod should prevent it from sucking up current. I should point out that Nick taught me that resistive power supplies are less noisy than switching types, but, since I'm not trying to build a fiber laser for optical metrology---at least not today---I'm more worried about efficiency than noise.

The only part I bought that was specificly---more or less---made for this project is a motor/differential mount I purchased from Mike Cronin at RC Monster. This mount replaces one of the diff mounts and allows the motor and its pinion gear to mesh with the spur gear on the diff. I said "more-or-less" because the part was actually made for converting the Losi 8IGHT-T, the truggy¹ version of my buggy. Since the buggy body is "skin-tight," while the truggy's encloses a lot of unused volume, I found that the mount rubbed on my beautifully painted body. So, I had to grind off the upper outboard edge of the mount. Here's a photo of the unmodified motor/diff mount; the modified version will be visible on the completed car:


To hold that ginormous battery in place, I also purchased a machined plastic battery tray from RC Monster. I modified this part as well, which I'll show you later.


I also custom made a mount for the ESC that places the speed control near the centerline of the vehicle. I don't have any photos of that mount, although I'm Brian with the overhead projector about it.

I mentioned before that I'll be using a Nomadio Sensor radio, which has several nice features, including telemetry and noise insensitivity. Here's a photo of the transmitter:


Part 5 can be found here.

¹ A truggy, at least in the world of RC, is a "truck" that is really a modified buggy. Typically, a truggy has these features:

• The chassis is a slightly lengthened version of a buggy's pan chassis.
• The suspension ams linking the wheel to the chassis are lengthened.
• The wheels arnd tires are truck components.
• The body is similar to the stylized "stadium truck" body found at the 1/10th scale.
  

Lookie What Else I Made!

Check out my latest knitting project. I finished it last night and I think it's super cool. I made new shoes out of old flip-flops! OK, OK....I didn't have any old flip-flops so I bought a pair for a dollar at Target. Happy now? *sigh*

Michael actually found the pattern for these at the CRAFT magazine website and suggested I make them. At first the pattern looked really complicated, but I have found that sometimes if you just dive in, it all makes sense once you have the yarn in your hands. Anyway, here are some pics of my completed knitted espadrilles:


Cool, huh? As the woman who wrote the pattern suggests, they do end up feeling loose on your feet, so the ties are critical. They're pretty cute on, though, and are super comfy. Hopefully they won't fall apart the first time I wear them. :)

How-To: Nitro-to-Brushless Conversion: Part 3

Part 2 can be found here.

Part 3 of the brushless buggy project was painting and decaling the body that came with the kit. As I've said, and as many of you have noticed, I'm very concerned with appearances and other superficial matters, so this part was great fun for me. Additionally, I must say that the stcok Losi 8IGHT body is more attractive, to my eye, than the aftermarket bodies available from Pro-Line or JConcepts. Here're a couple of good shots of the mounted body:


Yet another reason for going electric is that I won't need to cut one hole in the body to allow the engine's cooling head to protrude and another to allow me to fill the tank. Not only does the vehicle look cleaner this way, but the aerodynamic drag should be lower as well. For a comparison with the stock, nitro 8IGHT, check out this photo.

I'm Brain with the overhead projector about how the paint came out; there are a few flaws in my masking, but you can't resolve them in these photos. I'm also quite happy with how the black and white of the body contrasts well with the orange¹ of the wheels, wing, antenna tube, and body-clip retainers.

For scale, here's a photo with my Associated RC18B,² which some of you have seen:


Also for scale, here's a shot with everyone's favorite Bichon, Newton:


My plan now is to report on the real guts of this project---the brushless/Lipo power system---once I get that done, whenever that turns out to be.

¹ I've chosen orange as my signature color in the world of RC.
² I converted this thing from an RC18T, which conversion basically consisted of attaching some wing-mounting hardware and a new body.

How-To: Nitro-to-Brushless Conversion: Part 2

Part 1 can be found here.

The second part of my brushless buggy project was assembly of the non-nitro-specific portion of the Losi 8IGHT kit. First, I assembled all of the mechanical components that required no modification. Doing so entailed putting about 200 parts (plus screws) together, which wasn't so bad, since the manual is quite clear. The hardest parts were filling the diffs and especially the shocks with silicone oil of the appropriate viscosities; getting all the air bubbles out can be challenging. Here's a photo showing the car at this point in the construction; it also illustrates just how off-center the center diff is.


Next, I modified the electronics box by cutting off the portions designed to house the receiver pack and brake servo. I'll be powering the Rx and the servos using a voltage regulator---called a battery-eliminator circuit in the RC world---running off the main battery. Additionally, I'll be using the motor to provide braking, which will eliminate the ability to adjust front/rear brake bias, but also save a lot of weight, room, and complexity. Here's a photo of the car with the modified electronics box, Rx, and steering servo installed:


Note that I have only a very short length of antenna oriented vertically and potentially projecting out of the body. (The antenna is housed inside the orange antenna tube at the right front of the car.) I can do this because my radio system, the Nomadio Sensor, uses the same 2.4-GHz band that cellular phones employ. Between this high frequency and the spread spectrum¹ modulation that Nomadio radios use, the transmitter-receiver link should be very resist to noise. (Come to think of it, noise is another reason to go electric; all those moving metal-on-metal interfaces in a nitro engine put out a lot of radio static.) I should also mention that the link is bidirectional; the receiver---really a transceiver---cames with temperature, voltage, and speed sensors, and it can send telemetry back to the transmitter---also really a transmitter. I'll try to post photos of the transmitter later.

By the way, in the above the photo, you can see the body I painted for the 8IGHT. That will be the subject of my next post on this project.

Part 3 can be found here.

¹ Frequency-hopping spread spectrum,² if you must know. Nomadio claims this is superior to direct-sequence spread spectrum, but I would think the opposite would be true.
² I should point out that actress Hedy Lamarr contributed significantly to the development of spread spectrum.

How-To: Nitro-to-Brushless Conversion: Part 1

Some of you may know that I spent a big chunk of 2005 working on and modifying a radio-control monster truck, specifically a Traxxas Revo. I learned a lot about 2-stroke glow-fuel¹ engines and quite a bit about suspension settings: caster, camber, toe, droop, and so forth. These suspension settings are important in full-scale cars, but there importance is exagerated in smaller-scale vehicles due to the very high power-to-weight ratios and scale speeds. Eventually, I felt like I had learned most of what there was to know on this topic, and I was tried of futzing with and cleaning the temperamental and messy engine.

Well, a couple of months ago, I became re-interested in building RC cars and experimenting with suspension mechanics. This time, however, I wanted to run a clean, quiet, electric vehicle. Traditionally, nitro engines have put out more power than electric motors, so the larger, more complex---and thus more interesting---models have typically been powered by nitro. In particular, the class of vehicle I was most interested in was the "Formula 1 of off-road RC," the 1/8th-scale. These buggies have 4-wheel drive with 6-gear differentials front, rear, and center, front and rear disc brakes, extremely adjustable suspensions, and long-travel shocks that can absorb the landings that follow 30-foot jumps, and are nitro-powered. In recent years, though, brushless motors and lithium-polymer/ion/manganese batteries have advanced to the point that electric power systems can be more than competitive with combustion-based systems. Thus, since I'm in favor of voiding warranties and believe that if you can't open it, you don't own it, I decide to convert a 1/8th nitro buggy to brushless/LiPo power.

Further, I've now decided to chronicle the conversion on this blog, much to the consternation of the readership, I'm sure. I'll wager² you're asking, "Where's all the sci-fi news and puppy photography I really want to see?" Well, you'll have to wait a bit for that.

My first step was to select a buggy model. I chose the Losi 8IGHT,³ partly because it is generally well regarded, and partly because the unique, extremely offset position of the center differential---designed to allow the engine, and thus the car's center of mass, to sit close to the centerline of the vehicle---seemed helpful for mounting the huge battery pack⁴ I'm planning to use. I also like that most of the aluminum parts are hard-anodized. The downside to this car is that is uses Imperial hardware; ugh. Anyway, here's a photo the buggy still in the box:


Please note that the dog is not provided with the kit; he is an optional accessory. Said dog will actually slow down your assembly of the vehicle, but he will also put a few smiles on your face during the build. And look how cute he is!

I hope to report the next part of this conversion, the assembly of the mechanical components, soon.

Part 2 can be found here.

¹ Model-car engines usually run on a mixture of methanol with 10 to 30% nitromethane and about 15% lubricant.
² If I wager 4 Quatloos, will that make you feel better?
³ I should point out that RC is one of those industries where no one pays the so-called retail price. For example, I paid significantly less than half the MSRP for the 8IGHT and about half MSRP for my Revo.
⁴ 4 lithium-polymer cells,⁵ wired in series, each nominally 3.7 volts with a capacity of 8 ampere-hour.
⁵ Actually, each of these is really 2 cells wired in parallel, but I was trying to keep things simple and clear.^6
6 Aren't footnotes great?

Lookie What I Made!

Just in time for the new season known as "Second Winter", I have made two scarves! Check it out:

This was my very first knitting project. I only had to start it, like, a hundred times before I figured out what I was doing. I also learned that things knitted in this particular pattern (called "stockinette"...I have no clue why) tend to roll up. Oh well! I kinda like that it's all roll-y.


This is my second project. I attempted to re-create Crazy Aunt Purl's magic scarf. This was hard because it involved counting and not getting distracted by the TV. Still, I muddled through and it looks pretty cool I think.


Check out the up-close uber-cool basketweave action:


So, the knitting is going swimmingly except for one thing. Newton has decided that he LOVES yarn. It's his new favorite toy. He must have it. Now! It's hard to learn to do something new, but perhaps doubly so when you have to do it while trying to keep an exuberant puppy from constantly interfering. *sigh*

Oh, incidentally, that's the noise Newton makes when he finally gives up trying to eat my yarn for five whole seconds and instead sulks on the floor in front of the couch, giving me very, very sad puppy eyes that say, "Fine, Mrs. Meanie...just keep all the fun yarns for yourself! I'll just lie here and be miserable without any delicious yarns." *sigh*