Hello everyone,
I’m newbie to this VEX Robotics and I have questions on the motors.
How many motors are needed to lift about 1.5 lbs?
Can we program the motor to receive a certain amount of voltage, in order to perform a good lift?
Well…
Depends on your lifting mechanism. Generally, when you gear from small to large, you can lift a decent load, but you have to take into account torque and other calcs when you say “1.5 pounds.”
Yes, you can program the motors to whatever voltage you want. In the program it’s said like speed, but you can set it to all forward (127) or any other value. Or you can control it via joysticks.
I found this, it should help you with your arm lifting needs:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/19641472/Motor-Selection-workshop--Lecture-notes
It tells you how to calculate the force necesary to lift the arm, and nearly how efficient your drive setups (gears, sprockets, cables, etc) are.
I used a single VEX Motor to easily lift this five pound weight with the Bionic Arm shown in the VEX Gallery.
https://vexforum.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=404&catid=member&imageuser=392