Quote:
Originally Posted by Ether
I for one would like to see a bright-line rule that robot designs must have external stops to prevent the pistons from colliding with the endcaps of the cylinders, regardless of whether this 20ips rumor is authentic or authoritative.
That's the safest approach, and gives the inspectors clear guidance.
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Some actuator manufacturers require bumpers if application results in piston speed is greater than 4 ips.
Teams should prove their cylinders alwaysmove slower than 4 ips or stow robust external stops.
Applications of a kicker mechanism, the only realistic approach is to have external stops. The real question is: if you have external stops, is there a maximum piston speed that Bimba will certify conforms to their design parameters
and their safety testing? My guess is that the official Bimba answer is going to come back as 20 ips. If it was higher, IMO it's not likely that a Bimba representative would have said 20 ips.
I doubt Bimba will get an actuator engineer to stick his/her neck out and put out a blanket statement that say 20 ips can be exceeded (by a a factor of X ) if the external stops are good. That would be great for FIRST if he/she did because I think substantial rework may need to be done if Bimba makes a definitive statement on piston speed: and much of the rework will potentially make the modified mechanisms less safe, not more safe.
(I say potentially less safe because it will result in more connections and disconnections from the piston and kludged mechanisms for attaching and detaching from pistons in order to keep the designed piston speed low.
More misfires are likely to result. Every misfire is a potential to hurt a careless person (those persons that don't assume that the kicker will misfire EVERY time someone does something lazy or risky).