Crusher question.

Has anybody ever made a really short crusher/slicer/piercer that was non-hydraulic? Would this be effective?

Having a long Razer/Tiberius like beak has major advantages in terms of coverage/reach, and utility (able to lift robots up), however a much shorter weapon would have a leverage advantage for crushing.

Would the leverage advantage be great enough to allow you to make it effectively work while motor driven instead of hydraulic? I believe Suicidal Tendencies did this way back, but it didn't work so well because their arm was a Razer type.

Even if the arm is shorter you will still need a huge amount of torque (and a very beefy drive-train to provide it) to have any real 'crushing' force, grabbing is probably more realistic. What you should really use, if instead of hydraulics, is a linear actuator which will provide a large amount of the gearing needed in a single stage (the 'screw' of the lead screw, think why bench vices can grip with so much force). Venom, the featherweight version of Razer uses such a mechanism very successfully.

The Swedish heavy Mithril has a pneumatic powered crusher, with a 140bore*120stroke FP ram there is a serious amount of power available.(about 8 ton).
It wasn't effective, due the strange shape of the beak/cutter. Even if it got under the opponent, not easy with a non floorscraping beak, the lower jaw swiveling up was a surefire way to push the opponent off.

But it could cut a 25mm piece of rebar.