Nitinol actuators

[patrickrd]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to make you all aware of a pretty cool material called nitinol. The product is sold in wires. When you apply a current to the wire, it heats up and the wire contracts by about 5%. This all actually only takes a fraction of a second with an appropriate current. Nitinol is very cheap and virtually weightless. The wire is also very strong; a 0.015" diameter wire works with a 2 kg (~5 lb) load.

Now this obviously has limited applications, but I can think of many mechanisms for FIRST where it would be a great alternative to a solenoid or pneumatics.

Small Parts sells Flexinol, a type of nitinol actuator. We are considering using it for one of our mechanisms on our 2004 RoboCup team. The item we ordered mysteriously disappeared from Small Part's website, so here is another link I found:

http://www.dynalloy.com/

Someone may wish to comment if this is legal according to FIRST rules, too...

- Patrick