pic: Versa Roller Claw

[smistthegreat]

Originally Posted by Seth Mallory

Having the motors being the widest parts make then easy to hit. If you want an easy angle gear box get an Harbor Freight 18V angle drill. You then sub in a first motor of the same size, remove the chuck, and then trim or replace the housing.. We used for a grabber a few years ago when 3 days before shipping we decided that what we had could brake off. What we put on did not look nice but it took one day to make and install and it never failed. It was a great gear box. If you look at team 100's bot of a few years ago they had a very nice looking grabber. It also waved to the crowed.

The whole point of this exercise was to examine how easy it is to design a mechanism that used to be custom-only using only COTS parts from VexPro that could be assembled with no more than a drill and a hacksaw. Using the new AndyMark gearbox would be easy to implement, but expensive. Using the Harbor Freight gearbox would be cheaper, but harder to do with only hand tools.

Either way, I don't think my current implementation is particularly bad, especially for how long it took and the fact that it's all COTS. Also, roller claws have definitely been made before, successfully, with exposed motors like this: http://i.imgur.com/PeQIDbJ.jpg

Finally, since I don't plan on actually building this, it's mostly a moot point anyway.