LINEAR ACTUATORS

[SciBorg Dave]

Are these legal under the definition of COTS ?
http://www.progressiveautomations.com/linear-actuators

We would like to use these if possible.

[Sparky3D]

The rules for 2016 aren't out yet, so we can't say for sure. However, based on the rules from previous years, you would have to replace the motor on those actuators with one that is in the legal motor list. Basically the mechanical portion is legal, but the motor on them probably won't be.

[Knufire]

AM has the DART Module which is similar and FRC legal.

[MrJohnston]

We found the DART actuator to be a great product and would certainly consider using it again... It's a bit pricey, so we'll wait to purchase one until we think we need it.

[SciBorg Dave]

The ones we are looking at are half the price.

[jagoldman]

The normal pattern is that you can use whatever mechanical system you want, as long as its not a fully assembled arm or something like that. However, you can only use FRC legal motors. So I would say yes, but you will have to use FRC motors.

[headlight]

It looks like the motor they are using is about the same size as the BAG motor, but it uses 3 screws to mount it to the gearbox so you would have to come up with a way to solve that.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by SciBorg Dave

The ones we are looking at are half the price.

The question now becomes "what price do you value the redesign/rework of your chosen linear actuators at?"

Because here's the thing: You will (if past years are anything to go by, and in this case I would say they are) need to re-engineer it to work with an FRC-legal motor. This could be anything from a couple of hours to a few days. On top of the time to modify and plan, you lose those man-hours that could be used for something else. On the other hand, you get some practical experience.

The call on "DART or modify" that can be made by anybody other than your team, but I can tell you that if you show up with a motor that isn't legal--and that includes the ones in those linear actuators, potentially--the inspectors will have you put a legal motor in there.

[dradel]

We used actuators in ultimate ascent. To meet the rules we changed out the motors to legal motors. We used dart actuators last year and yes are a bit on the pricey side but less to go wrong, and if there is an issue parts are available.
When we used the actuators in ultimate ascent we had a metal spacer inside the actuator explode in St. Louis. Thank goodness for the folks in the machine shop !! They were able to spin us out a couple on the lathe.