Arms

[1359th Scalawag]

Our robot this year had no motors in the arm itself, (2 motors from the kit at the base of the arm) One motor would move the arm up and down and the other would pull a wire connected to an elaborate system of pullys that could make the arm telescope up to 3x it's origional length. As much as possible we usually try to not use pneumatics.

We made the hand as simple as possible by not putting any motors in it at all. It's just a peice of metal bent into a hook shape that would slide along the ground. It was actually very fast at both grabbing the tubes and putting them on the rack.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/28136

We also use no motors to deploy the ramp. The arm extends and catches on the ramp to push the ramp into position. We somehow came up exactly at 120.0lbs on inspection. If we had decided to add any more motors than we did, we wouldn't have passed.