Re-designed chassis

This is the second version of the chassis, including a menacing 'grill' on the front

Since I posted the feedback of the modular circuits and the chassis design, I have been working on an updated chassis. Here are a few images of the chassis, currently without any electronics.

Here is a list of updated design features:

• The chassis is both thinner and shorter as I have no removed dead space on either side of battery and moved the caster ball wheel move closer to the battery so that it can be shorter
• It now has a sectioned battery compartment with a removable access panel, so that the battery does not move or fall out unless you remove the panel
• The motor mounts have been moved outwards and altered slightly, so that the wheel can be pushed fully on and will not rub with the chassis
• An integrated 'bumper' has been added, which is designed to slide back and make contact with a touch sensor
• The ball caster wheel has been updated, so that the ping-pong ball is slightly less loose
• Slots have been added in the centre of the chassis layers so that wires, such as the battery connections, can be wired through to the middle section
• The orientation of the LDR mounts have been altered, to point slightly more outward
• I made the ball caster wheel mount have a thinner section, so that the robot is more level

The battery compartment with the panel...

...and with it removed

There are already some known issues with the current design:

• The centre support of the bumper prevents it from sliding backwards
• I think that the bumper could look slightly less menacing, removing half the supports may fix this
• The ping-pong ball in the ball caster wheel now has some play, however, when the robot is resting on it, it causes enough pressure that it will not move as freely, one way to fix this would be to add bumps (ribs?) to the contact point of the ball caster wheel as to reduce the surface area that is in contact with the ping-pong ball
• The mount of the ball caster wheel is now thin enough to break easily
• Friction on the bumper prevents it from moving backwards and forwards easily, this could be helped by adding a layer of paper to act as a spacer

A close-up of the front 'bumper'

The two versions side-by-side

This chassis design (v0.2) can be downloaded from Dropbox.