We Come BEARING Good News
In VEX, we use a piece called a bearing block (picture below). If you put an axle through a "c" channel piece hole the axle will have side to side moving space. However, if you place a bearing block it will keep the axle from moving and improve the stability of the structure. Since a metal motor is connected to n axle, the bearing block also keeps the metal "c" channel and motor from rubbing together. So, today we placed bearing blocks along each of the joints (where axles are needed to make the pieces move) of our 6-bar system arm to strengthen it. We have good news and bad news, but the bad news isn't too bad. First, the good news, we added bearing blocks and the arm is very strong and will most likely have no problem eventually picking up the robot! Second, we realized that our "c" channel pieces were not exactly aligned so we have to temporarily remove some of the bearing blocks to adjust and shorten some of our pieces. However, that isn't too complicated to do and should be done quickly! Our next goal is to connect the two 6-bar arms so that they move as one, and we can optimize motor usage (maybe use one motor instead of two).
