Mechanical Reliability

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Andrew Blair

I've searched for awhile for a thread discussing simply mechanical reliability, and I can't really seem to find one.

I don't know about other threads, but our '05 bot is a pretty robust design.

1. All mechanical parts were designed with big safety factors. For example, we thought our motor would lift an arm with a tetra at a speed of N feet per second. We bought a big sprocket that would only move the arm at N/3 feet per second. This marginally slowed down our lift speed, but the arm didn't break and the motor didn't overheat or burn out.

2. KISS. Keep it simple. If you don't have a big budget and the help of a high-end corporate R&D lab, don't get cute. A simple bot that doesn't break will likely be more successful than a really clever one that you don't have the materials or tools to build strong.

3. Like the others wrote, do the math. We ended up changing some provisional specs after doing the physics analysis (it's handy having your mentor be the AP Physics teacher).

I'm sure others will have more clever suggestions for you soon. Good luck.