[Andrew Schuetze]

Originally Posted by russell

Our design is much the same except without the simplicity.
..snip..
I think we will be seeing a lot of designs that are all very similar. The problem I am now seeing with a design like this one is that when the robot is carrying the tetra its center of gravity will be way out in front of the robot unless they have a way to allow them to flip the arm behind the robot without dropping the tetra.

Edit: How many teeth do those sprockets for your arm have? When I did the calculations for a similar setup for us it would have been 4.5:1 reduction which would barely have given us enough torque to lift a tetra at the end of a five foot (and it can extend to seven foot) arm.

Our current design has a two stage gear reduction each one a 3.5 : 1 for an over-all 12.25 : 1 if I have done my math correct. We are using a single window lift motor and are going to mount a second window motor coaxial to the same shaft. Their specs are very similar and should give us the needed power.