pic: "You should never go against a robotics kid"

[samir13k]

...3 kids from 1501 (non-school sponsored team) were finally allowed to be in a group together in our schools engineering class. It was the first time the teacher let us choose our own groups. It was 1 mechanical, 1 electrical (me), and 1 design student. The task was to demonstrate a usage of pneumatics. We could recreate something using paper, or any other building material. So while most kids used the manual valves, Our group was the first in the classes history to actually use the solenoids in the kit. We did not have a programmer, but i managed to figure it out in a couple of minutes...
Anyways, while most people made something simple like the outriggers on a bulldozer, our group made a pneumatic claw! It was massive compared to all the other projects, used more solenoids than our last 3 bots combined...and used 2 controllers because the schools could only handle 4 motors/solenoids a piece. It could pinch. move outward/inward, and tilt up and down. I will try to remember to snap a pic of it tomorrow... If you can see it lol, its made out of awesome clear plexiglass

[dtengineering]

Technically the lack of a counterweight does not disqualify this as being a trebuchet... rather it puts it in to the category of the traction trebuchet. http://members.iinet.net.au/~rmine/htt/htt02.html

Jason