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> Just received the Pneumatic pack today.
> Oh my word!
My thoughts exactly when I recieved mine! I ordered two just so I could have
two air tanks. As fun as it has been fiddling with th pneumatics, I have yet to
incororate them into a robot. I had big dreams of a pneumatic block stacker,
but it never panned out. I still have the mechanism I was going to use to
control the four valves with one motor... What I am currently working on is a
window walker. I modified some aquarium suction cups and am using the old style
pneumatics (borrowed from Calum) to create a vacuum in the tanks instead of
compressed air. It is great fun, I can't wait to see the thing climbing
windows!
> More fun (next to Mindstorms Robots) I have not had!
> I can see where Chris gets his appreciation for these air mechanisms!
> I just built an arm with 4 joints and a grabber mechanism, set up the
> electric compressor as it shows in the instructions, and let the good times
> roll!
Speaking of air compressors, I have found these are quite a puzzle. I haven't
figured out the 'optimum' gear reduction and number of compressors yet. Someone
did a bunch of testing of different mechnisms, and it seems using an old style
motor with 5:1 reduction and just one small compressor pump works best. I
really would like to figure out a way to use the hand pumps!
> K, here's a question, I now have 3 (three) manual pumps, seeing as how one
> came w/ the pneumatic set and one came in each of the pneumatic circuits I
> ordered... What can you do with those big pumps? can you convert them into
> working pneumatic cylinders?
Not a bad idea, but no go. The pumps have only one inlet, and a built in check
valve. This means they can blow out, but nothing can be blown in.
> I only need one manual pump!
Tell me about it! By the way, as an aside, I have found the newer parts that
come with the pneumatics kits to be really useful. I used a bunch of them on my
stacker, like the studless beams, and the curved half beams. The studless beams
are great for sliding surfaces of a linear mechanism (ie the grabber on my
stacker, or cartesian robots like Iain is so good at).
All in all pneumatics are fun, but they require a lot of overhead, like the
compressor, pressure switch, and motor(s) to switch the valve(s). Things get
big a bulky really fast!
Rob
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| I didn't think it could be done. It's happened a few times before... once when the classic space sets came out for the first time ... who didn't look at the Galaxy Explorer and just 'fall in love with it'. Then when the Mindstorms came out, Loved (...) (23 years ago, 23-Apr-01, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)
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