My Senior design project - a "Swamp Thing" tracked vehicle clone

[Garauld]

Not really - the rotors I use do not have the parking brake drum surfaces. The red calipers are the service brakes. Room down there is very limited with the CV joints on the drive axles. I decided early on to skip using a parking brake and rely on the park feature of the automatic transmission.

 

[jmc]

Forgot the nature of your brake problem but if it's from inadequate pressure, maybe a simple hydraulic intensifier would help. Instead of the pressure going directly to the caliper, it goes to a larger hydraulic cylinder to step up the pressure. (Sorry if you'd considered this.)

 

[Fallon]

If the purpose is to showcase your skills as an engineer and your ability to configure electronics then by all means do it.

Myself personally I would look into utilizing a second caliper on the brake disc first.

Having a toy is fine but I want simplicity for reliability's sake when I would have the machine way out in the bush.

Those are my thoughts.

That along the lines of my first thought too. Given the quality of work on the machine so far I have no doubt you could accomplish it. But it seem pretty complex for a critical safety & operational system.

What's the PSI on a normal power steering pump? Could you just leverage something like that with a pretty well known reliability record & 2 manual valves? Leverage a brake booster & relatively standard braking system off a bigger truck?

 

[Garauld]

I looked into a power steering pump - as I recall, it is around 100 psi output. I think I need 0 to 1200 psi to effectively steer this on dry ground. Steering in snow was not a problem.

 

[Fallon]

I looked into a power steering pump - as I recall, it is around 100 psi output. I think I need 0 to 1200 psi to effectively steer this on dry ground. Steering in snow was not a problem.

They can vary a fair bit. I think most are in the 700-1500psi range.

 

[Garauld]

OK, the one I googled referred me to an old one. But a PSP is still just a pump and I need some device to spin it and then another device to adjust the pressure coming from it. The Toyota Echo I cannibalized did not have one.

 

[airbiscuit]

Vacuum brake booster?

 

[MossRoad]

Not really - the rotors I use do not have the parking brake drum surfaces. The red calipers are the service brakes. Room down there is very limited with the CV joints on the drive axles. I decided early on to skip using a parking brake and rely on the park feature of the automatic transmission.

View attachment 695862

How about you use both calipers for steering, and put a line lock in one of them for parking?

 

[Xfaxman]

I think there is a way with the right hydraulic components to let the steering use both calipers on one side and the service brake use all 4.

 

[Garauld]

I don't think there's enough volume in the current master cylinder (mc) to actuate two calipers. A larger mc with the vacuum booster may be an option. I don't plan to implement a parking brake.