Hola, We are thinking of using the pneumatic actuator to help rotate our pickup arm. Anyone have any experience with these? Any diagrams or advice is always helpful.
The little rotary actuator that you can get from Bimba can barley pick up itself.
It’s useful to turn small things that don’t require a lot of torque. I think the only time we successfully used it for anything was to trigger the balls into out shooter for Aim High.
If your wondering pneumatics are good for fast movement. just make sure you get the right ones because some are very wimpy and cant lift them selfs.
for more information on grippers/pros and cons goto:
there is some useful information there.
Hope I helped let me know if you have questions.
Also, although is seems one wasn’t provided for this year, it might help to check out the pneumatics manual from last year; http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=18068
We actually used the rotary actuator in 2007 to turn our game piece from vertical to horizontal
It was tough though… and we had to play with the Moment of Inertia on our claw to make it work
It was painful to watch actually…it just BARELY turned it…usually.
I, too, wouldn’t recommend that you count on the rotary actuator for much work…
Pneumatics are excellent for motions that require two positions (one end and the other end), where the transition between the two positions must be fast, and where the forces required are not very large.
Understand how a rotary pneumatic actuator works. Basically, it is one (or two) small cylinders pushing an arm that rotates. Those small cylinders do not generate much force. So, for turning a small lever arm, they might be great, but for a large arm (like I might imagine for this year’s game) you might be disappointed in the power. Check the specs to be sure.