Robot Arm C

[durza0wnsyou]

So my school has some money left over in the budget, and are our coaches decided that they would use it to buy a kit to help get our robot arm started for next year. I did robot arm for this year, but with out much luck, so I was hoping that some people here might have some suggestion as to what kit our school should buy to get us started. Thanks!

[iwonder]

For kits, a lot of people modify stuff from lynx motion, works pretty well...

As for state, the arm was working well, I guess the score would've been 73 without the bonus, still closer to perfect than I ever got except that one of the teams motors fried the night before the contest while practicing... Still though, it was a good design, it would've gotten a really high score, and It did only use 3 motors, just had a little design flaw in my opinion... And anyways, the tie breakers don't only happen at a perfect score, so it's probably a good idea to plan for them anyways.

[illusionist]

A youtube search for "2012 science olympiad robot arm" will bring you across a nice design that uses only three motors: base rotation, shoulder rotation, and claw.

[twototwenty]

From earlier on this thread:

It would be quite possible to build a sucessful arm with only three motors, as can be seen with this example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62HaAmbV ... afe=active

[iwonder]

Not what I had in mind... But interesting. Simpler too!

[twototwenty]

What did you have in mind, then?

[illusionist]

From earlier on this thread:

It would be quite possible to build a sucessful arm with only three motors, as can be seen with this example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62HaAmbV ... afe=active

Yup, that was the one I was describing in my post above

[iwonder]

What did you have in mind, then?

Its a scara system(two rotation servos) and a z axis control... I didnt get a real good look at it, the team had it packed in a box because the z axis apparently failed. I think they had an electromagnet as the end effector... Definatly a different design, the trick is picking up the PVC.

[illusionist]

Got 3rd at Michigan states with 88 points, missed one pencil, a nail, and a battery. I was surprised by a couple things:
a) the amazing variety of designs I saw
b) how noncompetitive this event was

There were so many solutions, almost no two were close to identical. Concerning the competitiveness, first place had a perfect score, second place got 93 points, third had 88, and sixth had 81 points.
Our arm was nothing special, just the basic image that comes to mind when you think of a robot arm. However, as I've learned, practice is what makes the difference.

[ohiostar]

The top placing at Ohio's state competition was decided by the first tie breaker, 4 motors vs 5 motors. There were two perfect scores and nearly another, the 3rd place team had a pvc pipe go out of bounds (otherwise it could have been perfect) .

1 Solon
2 Mentor
3 Centerville

All 3 had similar controllers for their arms. (potentiometers connected to mimic the arms movements, some here refer to it as "Master Slave".