pic: 1132 Progress (2)

[Sachiel7]

loading photo ...

[miketwalker]

That pneumatic cylinder is huge, how long does it take to fill that thing up to get the arm up?

[Denman]

can it pick them off the ground? to me it looks like you will only be able to get them from auto or human loading... and how does it store tetras? on the little lifty bit?

[petek]

You're making it out of Concrete?! That should guarantee you get some kind of award! How do you get it to look so metallic?

... Okay, this is the kind of thing that usually elicits an exasperated "Dad!" from my daughter, but I can't help myself. Seriously, your arm looks like a nice, simple solution.

[Sachiel7]

heh, no it's not concrete, i meant the physical bot and the CAD bot. Heh, I gotta watch my terminology or we all might get turned to stone!
AH!
Well, we've made even more progress on our arm today, and I'll post some new pics up tomorrow night (if possile!)
But to answer your questions-
-Yes, the arm can pickup a ground level tetra and above
-The arm does not consume as much air as youd think. 60Psi's worth, but, we are (probably) only powering our arm up, as there is enough pressure on the piston at rest to drop the arm easily. For our application, there should not e a time when we need our piston powered downward.
The arm is also very fast, I would say, she may be one of the faster cappers I've seen this year. She can lift a tetra from ground level in roughly 5-ish seconds (maye less caus I think I tuned down the pressure level to the arm)
Anyway, she's in good shape. I think the thing I'm pleased with most is that everything has practically turned out perfectly from our CAD files, and we are very pleased with the results.
We also like the simple design we conluded on, the KISS priciple is proving to be VERY effective.
Our next step - Lining our wheels with the tread we got from mc-master.

edit:
I just rememered the question I forgot to answer.
Our manipulator is not shown in either picture, but its mainly a bar with a certain spot for the tetra to sit in... ( ) and it starts in the up position and locks down at a match start.