we started with our design of two linear actuators, at the time we were looking at mechanical ones, and we found taht they were far too slow for, or far too expensive for what we need, with the (relatively) affordable ones going at 1 in per second and the very fast ones (i found up to 59 in/ sec) being at least 1000 dollars per
we then looked into pneumatic actuators, and found that while they can be very speedy, they might not be ideal for us due to them being difficult to control
Chris then suggested we use 4 lead screws like what is on the CNC router to essentially create our own mechanical linear actuator, being much faster for the price than commercial options
he later suggested that it might be better to use ball screws, as they will wear less with continued use and using them with a 775 motor at a 100 to 1 gear ratio would give us 6 in/sec, which would be a great speed for what we need
I also created a climber folder in FRC4096/2018-19/build season/ climber as well as a slack channel named climber2019
in the climber folder there is a doc containing a lot of lead screw links as well as some links to ball screws
Challenges
mechanical commercial linear actuators were either too slow or too expensive
pneumatic linear actuators are not very easy to control, and could therefore misalign the "stilts"
Work for Next Meeting
choose which parts we want to use and order them
On Schedule?
we have the parts pretty much figured out, just need to make sure which exactly we want, and we should be on track to building it hopefully by the end of the week.