Thursday 2 January 2014

PKP (automating a paintball gun)

On the more physical side of development on PK, I worked on how I was going to mount my Spyder Victor to PK, and how to trigger it from a microcontroller. Here is a rough mockup of what my mount will probably look like:
The grips on the gun will be unscrewed, and it will be sandwiched between 2 metal plates like so:
Behind the grip both plates will have a hole big enough for a piece of 1/2" PVC to fit thru, and that will be connected to 2 elbows which will in turn be connected to the base of the bot. In front of the air line, another hole will be cut into both plates which is big enough to fit a 1/2" tee, the tee will have pipe coming down out of it, and will be connected to another tee facing up and mounted on the center strut of PK. This will create a tripod that should hold the gun securely. On the topic of triggering it remotely, I think I have decided to use a servo mounted thru a hole in one of those plates with the servo arm resting on the trigger like so:

The servo has enough torque (barely) to pull the trigger when it is cocked, so that should work fine. On the off chance it doesn't, I have stronger (but slower) servos that could be mounted in it's place.

In this picture you can see how the metal plates will be mounted to the gun:
Of course it will be extended further than the plastic is right now, and it will be secured to the front with a pipe clamp instead of a zip tie, but that is how it should turn out. Notice the gun will be completely removable, and will remain unmodified so I can still use it when my robot isn't.

A picture of the entire gun: (yes, my barrel is 1/2" PVC, cheaper than a real barrel, and more accurite than the stock barrel)
Anyway, that's the progress so far.

1 comment:

  1. Really appreciate this post! Thanks for sharing my man

    ReplyDelete