$5 Aluminum Chassis

erco

Senior Member
I just got this lovely anodized chassis off AliExpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001280424688.html

The total was just $5.06 delivered from China! Shipping was 13 cents, next best thing to free ship. It's precut for those yellow plastic gearmotor modules that are everywhere. No immediate need or plans for it but I'll start scavenging goodies from my parts cache. FYI AliExpress sells a kit with motors, wheels and a ball caster but that one is ~ $17 shipped: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001280473233.html Helpful to refer to that listing just to see one way to assemble it. There are lots of holes & slots, and a 9g servo cutout on top. Mine took ~ 2 weeks to get here, that's very good these days.

The chassis is similar to this Makeblock kit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SK5RUQY

I don't see any smoking deals on motors & wheels right now, these are all kinda pricey:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/233990257481 https://www.ebay.com/itm/233986129477 https://www.ebay.com/itm/152772494803

I've bought lots of those gearmotors in the past for $1 each, and complete robot kits with a cheap clear plex chassis, 2 wheels & motors and caster for $6. But lately I've noticed big jumps in prices for Ebay China electronics, and free shipping is disappearing. But if you have some of these wheels & motors already like I do, this may be one of the last great deals you can snag out of China.
 

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erco

Senior Member
Yes, $1.97 plus $5.97 shipping (to USA anyway) Still not terrible. That's exactly the kit I used to find on Ebay for $4 or $5.

Yes, I was leary of AliExpress. Years ago they only took credit cards and I didn't want to give that info. But now they take Paypal, which I already use and has buyer protection.
 

erco

Senior Member
I finally had a minute to try this chassis out and program a figure 8. It has good potential IMO.

This is a generic $5 aluminum chassis from AliExpress driving a figure 8 pattern to demonstrate consistency. A Picaxe outputs timed servo commands to a Feetech FT-SMC-2CH motor controller to drive a pair of 120:1 ratio DC gearmotors. The most common gear ratio is 48:1, but those motors are unsuitable for a simple open loop control program as used here.

Simple code:

gosub beep
servo b.0,120:servo b.1, 105: pause 9000
servo b.1,150:servo b.0, 150' stop
gosub beep
servo b.1,125:servo b.0, 105: pause 8800
servo b.1,150:servo b.0, 150
gosub beep
stop

beep:
for b0=1 to 20
toggle c.0
pause 90
next
high c.0
return

 
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