Pet Robot Wheel Using Codeblocks

My pet robot, Roamer, needed reliable, quiet motors (Roamer runs 14 hours a day, resting only at night) and this required a redesign of the wheels.

Codeblocks in Tinkercad was the design tool I learned and used--a good decision. Following Tinkercad's little tutorial, one can be up and writing in less than an hour. The blocks allow for easy step by step building of a project, but the real power of the code comes if you need to make changes. For example, in attaching the designed wheel to my motor, the motor shaft is 6mm in diameter. The set screw to hold the wheel to the shaft is 3mm in diameter. In the 3d printing world, I'm never quite sure how much extra space to allow to make things fit. Using a 6.3mm hole to fit a 6mm shaft should work, right? It didn't. For a lot of reasons (slicing, printer, filament, orientation, print speed) things don't work out exactly. I had to change the 6.3mm diameter of a hole to 6.5mm for a good fit. This required just one number change in Codeblocks (of course, it's radius instead of diameter there).

3d printer

Tinkercad

I started by creating the "set screw shaft."

You can see the entire code here.

Next, I created a hole for the shaft and combined the steps. Then I brought in a 3mm piece for my set screw.

I rotated the axis on the 3mm piece, changed it to a hole and moved it onto the shaft. This was followed by adding three pieces to hold the rubber tire (vacuum cleaner belt).

The printed wheel looks like this.

The set screw has been added.

The tire (vacuum belt) is pulled onto the wheel.

The motor shaft can be pushed into place and the screw tightened.