Pan/Tilt Assembly

[Tanner]

Hi all,

My team is looking at the possibility of making a t-shirt cannon robot over the summer and just for fun we thought of putting the cannon on a pan/tilt module.

We've never done anything like a pan/tilt assembly before. The tilting part is pretty easy for us to figure out from what a few of us figure though the panning part is tripping us up a bit. In 2006, we (or rather last year's graduating class) made a swerve drive using some sprockets mounted onto some wheel 80/20 assemblies. I did some searching on the forums and it appears the same idea/method is plausible. What I wasn't sure of was the alternate methods that could be used.

In other words, what could be used to provide smooth panning-like motion to a t-shirt cannon assembly (probably with some weight to it) with support for an encoder?

Thanks
-Tanner