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/diy/ - Do It Yourself

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445609 No.445609 [Reply] [Original]

anyone ever build a rc lawnmower?

im thinking about building one using a saber tooth 2x25 v2 motor controller, two windshield wiper motors and a chain drive a power wheels battery and maybe tracks or spiked wheels

I have been thinking about it for a while but almost cutting my toe off recently has made me think about it more

>> No.445717

>>445609
Not ever built one personally, but they are the shit if you have a flat yard. I would imagine that you'd need more than just the power of the engine and turning the wheels to keep them going strait on a bank...

>> No.445739

>>445717

R/C a hover-mower then

>> No.445746

>>445739
>hover-mower
hover-joke. I don't see how one of those would come close to working well, and it would doubly be harder to make a control system for one on top of that.
Back to OP,
I wonder if you could get away with rigging some cheap turning assembly onto a self-propelled push mower and then just attaching a small electric motor to the speed control wire for a simple throttle. Maybe even have something to control the neutral lock and the shut-off in a more fancy build.
This could be a lot cheaper than going to the effort of making a regular one be propelled by a separate system (or worse yet, building the whole thing from scratch)...

>> No.446655

OP, you will need a lot of power for this. I suggest that you use a gasoline motor for the mowing part and only use electricity for the driving. You should have 2 motors, each connected to both side wheels to imitate a tank steering. This way, you can turn without having turnable wheels like cars have. You would also benefit from some nice tractor tires because the stock plastic wheels on mowers won't get the thing moving far.
Use bicycle chains and sprockets to connect the wiper motors to the wheels. From there on, you will only need plain DC model regulators (intended for ships) and a pair of a transmitter and a receiver. You will need a plane/heli TX for this because a transmitter intended for cars may only have a steering wheel and a trigger which is no good for your "tank" steering. Unless that TX specifically has a "mix" (X+Y...X-Y conversion of the channels) built in.

>> No.446687

>>446655
And of course, you could use car generator connected to main engine so you won't have to drive with big accumulators. Using electric engines to drive also has nice feature of reverse gear, because I for one don't have reverse on my mower