Manipulator designs

[JamesCH95]

Last year we tried to do an arm design with Potentiometers... it can be very dangerous. If the pot decides to come loose (as will happen in competition) and "wraps around" the arm thrashed violently and almost caused severe injury on more than one occasion. I don't know if that was an inherit hardware or software flaw, but I would not recommend it. As for the load bearing aspect, we used 1/2" hardened Steel dead-axles where the arm sprockets had the bearings pressed into them. That part of the design worked well and was incredibly rugged and compact. Good luck with you design experiments!