Quote:
Originally Posted by PAR_WIG1350
A solenoid is simply a coil of conductive material (Technically, there are many accidental solenoids on robots every year, but those are not actuators). The bell pictured clearly utilizes a pair of solenoids wrapped around the iron core. As stated it is an actuator. The actuation occurs as a result of current passing through said solenoids, thus, it is a solenoid actuator.
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A solenoid is a particular kind of wire coil: it's oriented such that it produces a uniform magnetic field within the core.
For sufficiently lax definitions of "uniform", sure, we've got all sorts of solenoids. But then you get into perverse situations where every motor winding is a rudimentary solenoid, and thus the motor is a solenoid actuator as well as a motor. (I, for one, certainly don't want to believe that this is what FIRST intended. It kind of flies in the face of conventional nomenclature, both for motors and solenoids.)
For the bell and the clutch, if the windings are squarishly wound around a squarish core (in cross-section), the magnetic field will likely be very non-uniform. That's also a poor approximation of a solenoid.
Contrast this with an ordinary solenoid actuator, which does indeed contain a tightly-wound cylindrical coil of wire, designed to provide a uniform magnetic field within the core.
I don't really see any way to judge from the rules that the level of non-uniformity found in the clutch's magnetic field is substantially different from the non-uniformity of magnetic field produced by a motor's windings.