Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Rodriguez
I am really interested to know how well that arm holds up throughout the competition season.
Did it take any hard impacts from other robots? What is it designed to take?
Also, what spares have you planned for it?
Very cool design.
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Jeff,
I also am interested to see how it holds up to abuse. I think it was designed pretty robust. Our process is more experience based guessing, than hard calculations. We had 2"x3" tubing ordered...it seemed like 2"x2" might not be enough...so we went with the bigger tubing.
The entire arm mounting is tied into the frame structure. The arm pivot is 2" diameter 1/16" wall tubing.
Since the entire arm and pivot are welded together, we have one spare arm which is fully assembled on our practice bot. We also have spares of all the attachment pieces and rollers components in case those become damaged.
The plan would be to attempt to repair the arm as much as possible if it gets bent up. If not, pull it off and replace it with the practice bot arm.
We didn't take any big hits at Waterford. Short of running it full speed into something, I am not that worried about it getting serverly damaged. The arm was designed to protect the rollers from taking an impact, with (2)-2" AL angle pieces placed in front of them....so, I feel ok with them being safe.
When the arm was initially welded, it flexed and ended up outside the 14" limit. We attempted to bend it back, with a chain, some huge pieces of steel, and some 200+lb engineers. After flexing over 3/4"...there was a huge "pop"
and we broke the right elbow arm weld joint. We re-clamped the arm into the right position and re-welded it. We may gusset that joint, if matches start getting crazy.
Thanks for all the great comments!