pic: Team 340

[Matt Leese]

Originally Posted by BurningQuestion

Looks amazing... very elegant design.

Have you had any issues with the tetras sliding down the arm when the arm is raised at an angle? Or is there a way that they are held in place?
Out of curiousity, what motors are you using to control the arm joint angles?
And I am also wondering... what is your drive train setup? I see that it is 4wd, but not much else.
And the telescoping... how is that done? (I think I am seeing telescoping sections on the secondary arm)

Hopefully I will be able to see this in action.
Great job!!

We did have issues with the tetras sliding down but if you notice there's a cross piece on the end of the arm which holds the tetras out at the end of the arm. The arm is being controller by the CIM motor for the lower arm and the van door motor for the upper arm. There's a variety of gearing in there that you really can't see in the picture.

The drive is three-speed four wheel drive. The front wheels are modified wheel chair wheels and the rear are custom wheels.

The telescoping only happens once at a beginning of a match and then locks in place.

Matt

[Katy]

how do you lower yourself? Is the drive train/robot in general doing well with the bumps it may take while lowering itself?

[Matt Leese]

Originally Posted by Katy

how do you lower yourself? Is the drive train/robot in general doing well with the bumps it may take while lowering itself?

It's lowered simply by driving backwards. The robot does quite fine with the bumps it receives. We've run it enough times not to be worried about it.

Matt

[rees2001]

Originally Posted by BurningQuestion

Looks amazing... very elegant design.

Have you had any issues with the tetras sliding down the arm when the arm is raised at an angle? Or is there a way that they are held in place?
Out of curiousity, what motors are you using to control the arm joint angles?
And I am also wondering... what is your drive train setup? I see that it is 4wd, but not much else.
And the telescoping... how is that done? (I think I am seeing telescoping sections on the secondary arm)

Hopefully I will be able to see this in action.
Great job!!

As Matt has written, we do keep the tetras from sliding with a cross bar. The final design didn't come until 3AM tuesday. It actually enables us to tilt the tetra as we raise it.
Aslo as Matt wrote, we drive the lower section of the arm with a CIM attached to a dewalt transmission in low gear (Thank you Dr, Joe). The upper section is a geared down van door motor.
We are running a 3 speed 4 wheel drive system using 2 CIM's run again through the dewalt transmissions, (thanks again Dr. Joe). the back wheels are custom machined & the front are modified wheelchair wheels.
The last part is the telescoping section at the end of the upper arm. It is gravity fed. It is held in place until it clears the body of the robot & then opens to release.

I hope this info helps.

[Justin Montois]

Thanks to everyone on this thread for your compliments. Truely shows that FIRST is not about just building robots