Locking devices

Ok, David.
Be good to have a chat!
I wont need to ask for you, i know what you look like, and your robots! (After the Easter event earlier this year!)

Calum, In response to ur question, It gets quite nerve-racking before ur first battle at the first outing for ur robot until the announcer says activate, U forget everything and concentrate on what U do. Also, it depends what battle U enter, If u enter a whiteboard fight, that will be a friendly fight, if its competition, U might get damaged I dont know but unless U attend a full combat event with ur robot, there will be no active spinners

Calum:

Ive no clue, Ive yet to fire that axe in a fight, because there was always something wrong with it :P

Calum,

Youll find that your first fight is always nerve racking. I remember wed spent a few weeks lashing Cylons gear box together before our first event at Nottingham last year (Happy aniversary Team Cylon!!:)). It really wasnt ever going to last long and I remember the feeling of dread when Pete asked me to drive into the middle of the arena because I wasnt sure itd get there. As it was it lasted to just before the end of the third fight and then died but only because a grub screw fell out.

The reality is itll get damaged sometimes. No-ones really out to do you irreparable damage and the damage you do get gets easier to deal with. First time we took Hydras speed controller out took us five hours to get it out and two hours to get it back in. This weekend in two and a half hours we replaced the speed controller (and did some fault finding on the other one to diagnose the faults, put in the new buffer tank and rewired where Beast had almost severed some of the cables, programmed the speed controller and so on.). After a year weve got enough experience to take ANY robot apart and we can almost put them back together too:rofl:.

Simple solution is if its broke and you dont know how to fix it just ask someone.

Andy

thanks andy:)

and there is now a pic of my robot up on my profile for the people who asked about a pic

i know theres problems with it like the front will bend and all the rest but for my first one its not too bad:)

also from early on, on the message board- you can see the locking bar i made

calum

(Message edited by calumco on October 20, 2008)

Looking very nice Calum - good luck at your first event!

I had an inkling that that might be the type of actuator you had, as I have the same one. I havent used mine in a robot yet but when I tested it out I seem to recall that it had a clutch system in it, in which case you shouldnt need limit switches to restrict the travel. Have you tried it out in your robot going to full travel? And does it try to continue to push or does it stop of its own accord?

Having said all that, its been months since I tested my actuator so I could be mistaken :lame:

hi jamie ,
now i come 2 think about it when it reaches it full length of travel it seems to go quiet, what i mean is if you hold a drills chuck and try to operate the drill it will fight against you and make a noise as it trys to move, but the actuator goes silent.

calum

most commercial actuators like that have built in limit switches internally so no need to add any in.

That model of actuator is actually direct-drive onto the leadscrew and so the motor will stall when it reaches maximum load or the ends of travel (unless you have a limit switched variation on the model, mine purchased from ebay did not have any). Shouldnt worry about stalling though as the currents involved are very unlikely to cause lasting damage.

Might be worth looking here if you ever consider a future actuator upgrade http://firgelliauto.co.uk/default.phphttp://firgelliauto.co.uk/default.php

Going back to the question :
The idea of the locking device is that when you put the link in, the weapon is prevented from moving in case there is a fault.
The locking pin etc is only removed when all is well.
So you do need one, having said that there are heavyweights with no weapon lock so could fire on power up!!!
Why is this not being picked up in tech checks?