Wheel Hub

So I’ve decided to build another antweight bot. (US Ant is 1lb. Not to be confused with UK Ant.) I last did this in 2015. I dug through my bins and found plenty of parts, so decided to try to build with what I have as much as possible. I found a bag of 10 N20 motors which are a bit on the small side for a 1lb bot, but figured maybe they’ll work if I go 4WD. I haven’t weighed everything yet, so this might not even work. However, what I really was missing is wheel hubs and wheels. I bought some 1/2″ x 2.25″ Fingertech foam wheels. (They’re cheap enough.) And I found a model for a hub on Thingiverse. Sadly, there are things I don’t like about that model and it is only shared as an STL file, so not really good for modifying. I used to be proficient at Fusion 360 (and used a paid subscription for work) but after they removed some important features from the free “hobbyist” version, I decided to boycott them. I tried learning FreeCAD a few times, but found it frustrating. It’s not really terrible… just different enough I was finding it hard to transition. Fast forward 3 years, and I figured I’ve probably mostly forgotten how to use F360, so it was time to try out the latest FreeCAD. Yes, it’s still missing things I knew how to do in F360, but I’m picking it up.

Grabbing a set of digital calipers and a 3D print of the Thingiverse hub I went to work and modelled my own version. I probably did about 10 iterations before I was reasonably happy with this.