pic: Donut Grabbing Idea
 

Re: pic: Donut Grabbing Idea
 

The design looks very nice, sorry it didn't get picked. I like the way you combined the wrist and gripping mechanisms. Did your team end up going with something simpler or with a different approach altogether? Oh, and how long did it take to CAD?

-Chris

Re: pic: Donut Grabbing Idea
 

Sorry to threadjack, but how do you present it nicely like that?

is that part of 3dsmax, or an inventor feature?

Re: pic: Donut Grabbing Idea
 

Edit.

Pavan.

Re: pic: Donut Grabbing Idea
 

The screenshot was taken in Solidworks regular work environment -- there was nothing special done to render this shot.

Re: pic: Donut Grabbing Idea
 

The team is actually going with something similar. Instead of pneumatics, we're using a threaded rod and globe motor for the grabbing, and we have wrist-like movement with a short third segment of the arm.

Ultimately it will be much less elegant, but simpler to make and repair.

Doing this design took maybe eight hours of work tops? During said time, I was IMing another college freshman mentor and I also made changes in various dimensions. (Originally I tried to do a 6" cylinder, but that was larger than needed, etc.) It was the only thing I did saturday after going to kickoff, and I touched up a couple things on sunday.

My team mostly calls them donuts. No one ever remembers to call them ringers.

Thanks for the feedback.:D

Re: pic: Donut Grabbing Idea
 

I like it, not sure on how reliable that this may be, or how accurate, but I really like the fact that you can control the inner tube with little surface area on the object. If thought out correctly, machined, and executed I think that this may very well have a good shot at being one of the better arms out there. Very simple, low complexity design. What else would a good engineer want? Hopefully programming will not become an issue with this arm, but I do think that you did a great job not only thinking it up, but also designing it as well.... so overall... Nice Job! P.S. Looks like the crane game...

Re: pic: Donut Grabbing Idea
 

Looks pretty nice. I'm not a fan of pneumatics so I like the fact you're going with motors in the end. Hoepfuly it works as well as it looks.

-Guy

Re: pic: Donut Grabbing Idea
 

Looks quite similar our current design concept, ours is sort of halfway between this one and the simpler motor actuated design. We're planning on using a small cylinder for "claw" actuation and a motor for rotation via the "wrist" method.