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Unread 28-11-2005, 00:10
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AKA: Kyle
FRC #1318 (the IRS (Issaquah Robotics Society))
Team Role: Coach
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Rookie Year: 2005
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Posts: 206
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Re: Alternative to limit switches?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Blair
I'm wondering about the use of pots. I know that they can be a degree or two off occasionally, and all the teams I've seen using them have a limit switch backup. Does anyone use pots exclusively?
Last year our team used only pots to determine the angle of our arm. However, we found that because of the inherent error, if we wanted the middle joint to bend as close to 360º as was safe, we would often slightly overshoot, pushing together two of our arm segments, bending the metal slightly and putting a huge amount of strain on the chain/motors. This was obviously a big problem, so we ended up retrofitting a limit switch to our arm halfway through the regional. The moral of this story: don't try to cut weight/save time by skipping the limit switch, you'll always regret it in the end.