Use of Lead Screw

[Grim Tuesday]

We used a lead screw in our 2011 robot. It had a 'duck bill' that clamped on tubes; this is what the lead screw as used for. It was surprisingly fast; we used one of the Banebots (not a 775, but not the smallest one either). It clamped on a tube in about .5 seconds. The one odd thing was, considering the fact that it is essentially a worm gear, it wasn't terribly powerful. The tubes could still be pried out, and the bill forced up and down.

[martin417]

1771 used a lead screw last year to power our elevator. It could go from the floor to the top rack in 3 or 4 seconds. See early slow motion test here. It worked flawlessly all season long. We purchased a 6' length of 5 start, 1" per rev ACME lead screw from McMaster Carr. The lead screw was not very expensive, but the nut and flange were more than expected. Here is a video of an early test showing the lead screw and assembly, activated by a hand drill. Sorry for the sideways video, and ignore the commentary. I couldn't find any still pictures of the assembly, but I did have this vid.

What was good:

• precise. we used an encoder on the screw to get position, and it was always dead on
  
• powerful. We never had a problem lifting the wight of the second and third stage of our elevator, and didn't have to use springs to assist.
  
• Reliable. We never had problems.
  
• Simple. It was super easy to design and build, no complex mechanisms required.

What was bad:

• Not as fast as other elevators I saw.

One thing you want to look out for is shaft whipping. There are equations out there for calculating the maximum rotational speed for a lead screw. Look at worst case, which is when the traveling nut is at one end or the other, and most of the screw is un-supported. If you exceed the critical speed, the shaft will "whip" or "Whirl" and cause vibrations that can be catastrophic to bearings and supporting structure. The critical speed is directly proportional to the length of the screw, so if your screw is short, you probably won't have a problem.

Good luck, and if you have questions, feel free to PM me.