2005 Arm Design
Team 810
The Mechanical Bulls
Nice job guys, glad to see you guys got a robot put together on time this year. I just hope whoever programmed it this year managed to get some time to play with it this year, unlike me with last year’s bot ;-).
One question, that sprocket on the right, what’s that for? Are you guys controlling the entire arm with just the van door motor?
Also, think you could post a picture of the whole robot, or are we going to have to wait till SBPLI?
very nice and clean but in my opinion that looks a bit on the weak side. not too thick a shaft or too well a mount and two arms that arent crossbraced. unless thats a plan to have flexing, if that were my team first thing id do is tack a couple braces across. or is square al stiff enough? never used it so i wouldnt know. but good job!
From the looks of it the sprocket on the right is either used to help rotate the arm around, or to keep the arm positioned onto the robot evenly and smoothly (balanced on both sides for stability). I am not too sure because of the angle.
We have a four stage reduction of the van door motor to lift the arm. That is what the right sprocket does. The Left sprocket holds the end effector level while the arm travels from 1 foot high to 12 feet high. The reason there is no cross bracing is because the Arm folds into itself, and the box Al is plenty strong enough for this.
Oh, and i will post a the final pic eventually 
Four stage reduction. NICE! How fast will the arm raise?
Dan Wolff
Team 250 Dynamos
Lead Mechanic
Jimmy Smith is my hero
with the forces applied like that…maybe box Al will not twist under a tetra but do you think it could twist itself because the force of the motor is applied on only one side?
Yep, four stage reduction. Right now the arm moves at a steady pace. We didn’t get too much testing in before ship but it would be able to make it up within the autonomous period.
Looks good guys, I’m glad you got it done, we had heard you were having some trouble. :ahh: 
If 810 was the same as it was the first three years, I’m sure they designed for 5 weeks, and started building in week 6 :p.
Looks like they actually got to test it this year, which is more than I can say we got to do last year. I remember sitting in the shop at around 4:30 pm frantically trying to test the pneumatics before it was crated up…
HAHA! Ian, you know us way too well, and more-so this year than ever… Though, to some onlookers it may seem that we are having some trouble getting it together, it’s a mere illusion… because we have found that the more designing and critiquing that you do, the less vulnerable your robot is to critical problems when it all comes together.
Katy that is definitely a relevant concern, and i took it into consideration when designing it. The force of the motor being applied to only one side doesn’t;t compromise much because it doesn’t;t affect anything but stress on the 3/4 axle, which has an enormous sheer strength. As long as there is allot of stiffness between the two box aluminum sides there shouldn’t;t be a problem. it was originally designed for a weld at the second arm joint, but due to a few technical problems we had to settle for a piece of 2" Al angle.
ian hit the nail on the head with that one…but also if u no team 810 we deffinetly be frantic on the first day in the pits…but as always…we shall prevail