Re: Alternator
 

so your team mates were thinking maybe you could put an alternator somewhere in the drive train, and it would recharge the battery while the motors were running?

Thats more or less a perpetual motion machine (around here we OBEY the laws of physics [wags finger] :^)

you can do that to some degree with dynamic braking, using an alternator to charge the battery when you want to slow down. Given the 130 second game period that should not be necessary, but if you had a robot that ran all day (running around a factory floor for example) that could be usefull.

I was thinking an alternator has a nice set of bearings, and quite a bit of mass on the rotor, and a built in pulley with a blower. If you took one apart you could possibly use components for a flywheel, a blower/fan, or maybe use the pully assembly as part of a gear train?

The blades on the blower could also be combined with an optical sensor to make a simple speedometer (encoder).

Re: Alternator
 

You'd probably be better off tapping off the DC outputs and using it as a poorly calibrated DC tachometer, though.

Re: Alternator
 

we were going to use one of the smaller motors in the KOPs this way, reading the DC voltage being generated (for a shooter in fact, a few years back)

but we could not figure out if using the small motor as a tach this way was legal?

Re: Alternator
 

Not to mention a really nice brush and slip ring assy.

Re: Alternator
 

And plenty of ballest.

If you where underweight, an alternator would solve that real quick. I remeber having to hold one in place while my brother tried to get the bolts in place. It wasn't heavy just carrying it, but try and hold one in an awkward position and you'll know what I mean.

Also, I think that because the whole of the alternator's case is one big ground that it would present a significant safety hazard. I would think that you would have to insulate it somehow, at least from the rest of the bot's frame how ever it is mounted and perhaps even so far so to completly cover any exposed metal.


-Andy A.