First thing that I do is solder leads onto each motor. Good soldering skills take a little bit of practice but it isn't difficult and it will pay big dividends in the final product. Usually you will need to add a capacitor array to arrest noise generated by the brushes against the commutators inside the motor but most Pittman motors, these included, have them built in.

Next I like to shrink wrap the soldered connection with a good quality shrink wrap. I got this shrink wrap at my local electronic surplus for $1.00 per 5' section. I would personally stay away from the shrink wrap that you may find at Radio Shack as it is more plastic and tends to split if shrunken too much or if too much heat is applied.

Most shrink wrap will have it's rating printed on the wrap. The stuff that I use is rated to 125 degrees Celsius.

Here I have a pile of motors and wires waiting for the next line of treatment.

Another thing that will help eliminate transient radio noise is to twist the motor leads or put the speed controllers as close to the motor as possible. After I twisted the leads together I put srhink wrap on them to keep them together. I used clear wrap to show off the red and black twisted pair.

Here is the long tube of clear shrink wrap cut into equal sections. Not only am I a stickler about wrapping everything up neat and clean but everything has to be wrapped to the same length. There is beauty in symmetry :-D

This is a test placement of the batteries. I chose to put them here so that I could leave the larger side for all of the electronics.

Now let's work on the other end of the wire. I use gold plated crimps because they are a thicker metal than the cheap aluminum ones that you would find at an automotive store. They are not much more expensive at $0.15 to $0.25 each.

After crimping it onto the wire I fill the exposed wire on the crimp with solder to not only ensure good conductivity but the wire will break before the crimp will come off. Then I shrink wrap the crimped section

For the leads that go to the batteries and the master power switch I added an extra bit of shrink wrap over the female quick disconnect to make sure that nothing accidentally get grounded. I also used this bright yellow shrink wrap to signify them as the battery leads.

For speed control I am using some of Moebius' old Victor 883s. I chose these because they are capable of handling 50 amps continuous which they will never see from these motors. And because they will see a maximum of 12 amps if all three motor on that side stall the MOSFETs won't really heat up so there is no need to replace the broken muffin fan.

Each side of motors has its own speed controller. This posed some problems that were not foreseen when actual testing came around. The bot was designed to keep all six wheel planted at all times but if one of them loses traction then all power will go to that wheel. Electrons want to take the easiest and shortest path so they go through the motor that is not pulling any current versus the stuck ones that are just short of stalled. Note to self: next time, one ESC per motor.

This is a look from the back underside of the bot. You will notice that all of the wire converges down the center of the bot. This is to allow the chassis to pivot without the wires interfering. The bot is also wired to run 12V and 24V at the same time. The drive motors are 19.1V motors running at 24V and the lifter motor is run at 12V and the ESC for it also has a BEC (Battery Eliminator Circuit) to supply power to the reciever and the servos.

The next thing couple of things were added for the sheer cool factor. The black circle is actually a color camera and transmitter that we had for some of our classroom bots. It is mounted on a servo in the center underside of the bot so that it can transmit live video back to the reciever. It can look 60 degrees off center in both directions.

Just in case the bot happens to be driving in the dark I fitted two ultra bright white leds on either side of the camera. They are actually trick license plate bolts that I bought at a local auto parts store for $5.00

BOOYAH!

Here's lookin' at you, kid

And looking away from the camera