Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience

[Cal578]

Originally Posted by rinim324

Can i get an expert opinion on a design that uses a three stage arm which extends via a pulley system but retracts using a winch powered by a toughbox? The Stages are 27in long with 8in of overlap.

Originally Posted by rinim324

Whether or not it would work. We actually revised it a little to have 3 stages and a slider peice on the end with hooks attached to it. The robot is designed to be a corner climber. The arm fully retracted fits inside the robot frame but fully extended can reach 38inches. The Arm is fixed on the frame at 60 degrees (The corner posts are 60 degrees relative to the floor not 68 like the sides). We extend the lift arm with a simple pulley mechanism but retract it with a winch that has the cable hooked to the outermost stage and pulls down at 60 dgrees parallel to the The Arm. We also have a wheel mechanism at the bottom of the robot that rides the vertical post as a third point of contact and it is designed to sort of "walk" over the corners of the horizontal bars. Once the arm is retracted fully two sets of hooks mounted to the frame will latch on to the horizontal bar while the arm extends to the next level.

I hope this is the info you would need.

This is an interesting concept, and has similarities to our plan.

By "3 stages" do you mean 3 parts that move, in addition to the fixed end? That is complexity that can be difficult to put into operation. Depending on how you use the pulleys to move the last stage, that could add up to a lot of torque on the first stage. Without seeing a drawing, that would be hard for us to evaluate. But it sounds good, and I hope it works for you.