My fellow team is doing the giant claw that is the rage these days in Starstruck. However, when they tested the claw on a bunch of stars, its motors stalled. I thought that it was due to the claws squeezing the objects too hard for the motors, and told the team to install a potentiometer to limit the claw’s motion so that it can grab the objects, but not squeeze them too hard. I’m asking you guys if there may be other reasons as to why. Their claw has two torque-geared motors geared together 1:1.
Here’s a picture:
have you tried pid? that would do exactly as you wanted, but you really only need a p loop
Sometimes rubber bands can help with clamping pressure (instead setting motors to 10 for a holding program). Does your claw have a torque gear ratio, or is it direct drive? I highly recommend a 1:3 gear ratio if you don’t.
It’s direct drive. Whatever comes out of the motors is what the claws are doing.
That might be part of the problem. Perhaps connect a pinion gear to each motor and drive the larger gear (the gear to which the C-channel is attached) via that. Once the claw has closed, don’t allow the motor value to exceed something like 15 or 20 for a holding power: you can probably program that into your code using the pot you have there. As you have it now, it looks to me like your claw would close extremely fast but that might not be worth the danger of overheating those motors.
This could also be the problem. From my experience, a 1:5 ratio is the best torque ratio for clamping stars. 1:3 might work too, but I don’t think as well.
I would recommend gearing for higher torque and adding rubber bands to hold the claw shut that way you don’t burn out the motors when holding stars in
