RC Car With an Arduino

CAD software used - SolidWorks

Manufactured - 3D Printed

Video Summary

This project took me awhile and has multiple parts, so I decided to make it easier to follow and give it a more in depth breakdown in the form of a video.

Objective

I wanted to make a challenging project that utilized CAD and programming so I decided to make an RC car.

Research

I knew almost nothing about RC cars before hand so I needed to do a lot of research.

I started on YouTube looking at how suspensions work and the different types of differentials.

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Programming The Electronics

Before assembling and designing the car I wanted to do the electronics to get the basic motions down.

I designed a remote control case that would house an Arduino, 2 3.4V batteries wired in series and a NRF24L01 with an antenna.

The code was pretty simple for this project. Since Arduino is open sourced I was able to find some code on the internet that I used as the backbone.

I then edited the code and used the NRF24L01+ library to add different parts to the code to get it to do what I wanted.

One of the main problems that I had was the servo and brushless motor had a pretty bad delayed response when I controlled them wirelessly.

I fixed this by researching possible issues other people had with the NRF24L01 and tested each possible problem I could be having.

I then learned that using the 3.3V pin on the Arduino for the wireless module doesn't supply enough power for good performance so I bought an extra adapter with a voltage regulator on it to use and it fixed my problem.

Designing The Car

When I first started to design the car I started with the chassis and made it a three part chassis that would be glued and screwed together.

I then worked on designing the parts that would go onto the middle chassis.

While designing the car I had to design and print at the same time or else this project would take much longer so I made sure all the parts matched up on each part of the chassis before printing so I only had to print it once and then assemble.

Some parts that I designed to put on the middle chassis included: 2 helical gears I found on grabcad, and used the scale command to adjust the size, a brushless motor mount, a battery holder with a slip on and slip off holder and some holders for the bearings in the middle.

After designing printing and assembling the parts on the middle chassis I began to work on the rear/front suspensions, the arms, and the gear box.

I started with the drive shaft which I printed as a long cylinder and reinforced with stainless steel rods.

I did this because I had a feeling the drive shaft would fail due to a torsion failure, so I added 4 rods to outer edge to prevent this.

After some research I decided a rear wheel drive with a locked differential would be best.

I worked on the housing of the differentials in a gear box, the shock mounts and the axels.

I made cuffs with holes in them to lock in the axels and to make them act like a ball joint connection.

I also believed that the axels would fail in a torsion failure so I reinforced them with 2 stainless steel rods on the outer edges.

I then made another part that would be connected to the wheel that would hold the front and bottom arms.

Finally for the gear box I made a drive shaft that would hold the locked differentials.

After designing and connecting the arms together I assembled the front and rear suspensions then began work on the steering mechanism which I thought would be the hardest part.

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When testing the steering mechanism it only took about 2 tries to find one that worked.

After putting in the steering mechanism I tested to see if everything worked.

In this project I used a ton of different parts for this assembly, so here some of the main ones I designed in Solidworks.

Final Thoughts and Future Edits

One big thing that I wish I would've seen earlier was when making the cuffs that go around the axels, I should've made the adapter that connects to the drive shaft a square indent instead of a circular one, because when there's high torque after awhile the connection will no longer grip and I'll lose power to the wheels.

I could also make the rear suspension a little higher off the ground and find a solution to connect the bevel gears to the drive shafts, because the solution I had was to use gorilla glue which I think will wear out after awhile

One more thing I would like to add is to upgrade to a better motor and esc, the motor I have right now has a pretty low torque and meant for cars around 3lbs when mines almost 5. Also the ESC is not that good because sometimes it won't change the speed of the motor unless I bring the joystick back to the "zero" position. The ESC and motor I bought as a combo for about $30 because I wanted to save some money on the project.

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