"Waffle" East Angelbots 1339 Offseason Project

[s_forbes]

Cool stuff! Keep us updated with pics on the build, it looks great. I like that you're using two different drive approaches in the same build, you'll get double the experience.

There are two parts of the design that I would be slightly worried about:

• The end segment of your arm is floating in the middle of two very long shafts. If you put much load on the end of the arm, the shafts will deflect quite a bit and allow the arm to sag. It will probably work fine if the game piece isn't very heavy, but you generally don't want to have a long shaft supporting a load like that. Snug the bearings from each segment up as close to each other as possible!
• It looks like you are transferring all of the load to move the arm from the big sprocket, through a shaft, and connected to the arm segment. You're relying on the strength of the shaft and hub that it's connected to to withstand all of the torque of the arm, and the shaft/hub is generally the first part to break in that situation. If you are able to design an arm so that the big sprocket is bolted directly to the arm itself, it will be much stronger. This is one of the more common issues I've seen at competitions during years where teams make robots with arms, and results in broken parts.

As this is an off season project and a chance to learn stuff, I'd say build it as is and abuse it til you break it! You learn a ton from finding the limits of your designs, and it helps you design them better in the future.