Extendable Arm/Hanger Subsystem? What works best?

[pilum40]

We're playing around with a design for an extendable arm/hanger system for our FRC bot. It is in two pieces, uses Gates belt drive to extend/retract and a dual hook/flat piece to hang and push portcullis up. I'm thinking this is way too complicated and frankly don't have any ideas or suggestions to make this better. What we want to be able to do is hang during the end game and manipulate the field defences during the game. Constraint: the team wants to keep the robot low to work through the low obstacle. That's why we have a two piece arm that folds (maybe...haha) flat upon the bot and raises up into a slot and extends up mechanically.

I'm throwing this out onto the forum simply because I'm just a teacher, not an engineer. Am quite frustrated with this. We solved the hanging issue for the "Frisbee game" by making a hanger that would get us 10 points EVERY game. We wanted to get higher then but did not know how to do this. Any references, pearls of wisdom other than "google it" would be appreciated. We are at total odds on strategy; we mentors advocate an aggressive attacking strategy combined with a hang at the end. We feel this is the only way to move up from mid-table last year. The team wants to play defense only; working the obstacles, pushing boulders into the low goal and breaking down the field works. I'm at a loss to move forward. My gut tells me to back off and let the team have full steam with minimal hard decision-making on mentor's part. My brain tells me that it's time to press the restart button and get them to work on yet another decision matrix to get max points. It's almost like they really don't care what happens as long as it is easy to do. Oh well...thanks for reading my rant. I still would be grateful for any help on the extending arm that is simple, robust, and works every match.

Thanks!

Steve Miller
Coach-Team 3355
Purple Vipers