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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Arm Replaced by Conveyor Belt

After a lot of unsuccesful testing and the "smoking" of one DC motor, the team decided to replace the pivot arm with a conveyor belt drive system.  We think this has the following advantages and disadvantages over the arm design:

Advantages
- A lot more stable as the bulk of the conveyor belt is fixed in place - less strain on the engine and less chance that it can come loose or out of alignment as the 'bot bumps around on the field.
- The conveyor allows for some additional baton storage - which will be helpful as storing the batons from the low goal was proving difficult

Disadvantages:
- The arm design that was replaced had a dual function to push down the balance bridge.  That functionality will need to be replaced with some servo's and swing arms, which may add complexity to our design and, more importantly, the programing

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