SteamBot - Wheels

Unlike DiscoverBot, SteamBot was going to move by a set of Steam/Clockwork-driven wheels (For those who did not see last year's work: DiscoverBot walked). The wheels were relatively simple to make. The tricky part was making sure that all the components would be able to rotate from the same, central pivot. Any imbalance and the wheel's rotation would look awful (if unrealistic). This problem was solved with handy use of the 'Snap' tool. Drawing a single line on the stage, the vertex of this was used as the centre. The outer wheel and its central axle were both drawn from this central vertex (Ensuring that the axle was in the dead centre of the outer wheel). The spokes of the wheel were simple tubes, also created from the central point, which were cloned and rotated. The finished wheel is shown below. The guide-line was removed before the wheels were imported into the SteamBot model.

With the model and pivot now correct... it was now a simple case of attaching this baby to SteamBot.

Not much had to be done to connect up SteamBot to the wheel. All it really required was a simple axle connecting it a 'housing unit' (A black torus on SteamBot). For added effect, the axle protruded from the wheel, making it look like a bolt, securing the wheel in place. Nothing like killing 2 birds with one tube.

And this was the model with the first wheel in place. Wrong colour, but looking good. That said, SteamBot would only be going round in circles with this...

The next phase was a simple case of cloning the wheels so that I had a full set of 4. The back wheels were shrunk considerably (SteamBot is front-wheel-drive you see), and most of the spokes removed, leaving just a single, larger one to hold the smaller wheel in place. SteamBot is now mobile... but looks exceptionally plain...