Conclusions and Future Work (11)
Justin
Did we accomplish our objectives?
I think the project went pretty well. We managed to accomplish our main objectives of creating an arm where the motors were mounted further down at the base. However, due to time constraints, we were unable to take the motors off the arm entirely as it would have required a lot of design work to design a gear train capable of transmitting that power all the way up the arm. Additionally, we weren’t able to get the power transmitted all the way into the wrist, and had to settle for a gear that power could be theoretically tapped from.
What would I do next?
If I had more time, I would definitely rework the design to put all the motors on the base itself as well as create a fully rotating wrist. It would also be super cool to build a manipulator for the arm.
Lessons Learned
Kinematic analysis is really useful for ensuring the design is sufficient for the desired purposes. I also learned how to calculate the kinematics of planetary gear trains, which I have always been confused by.
Tips for Future Groups
Get your stuff done early! Doing things on demo day will make your product look really bad.