James Goodwin

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Robot Project: Treat dispenser acrylic version powered test

Large servos installed with long levers to push the cranks on the dispenser, PivotPi controller board and power to the right

I got the servos installed after some back and forth. During powered testing to find the right position for the servos I managed to have the servo lever arm push on one of the axles. This popped the entire feeder body off of the base breaking the CA glue free. I had suspected that it would have a hard time holding on that long narrow seam on the bottom with torque and a big lever arm. So you’ll see later that I fabricated a couple of aluminum mounting brackets and screwed the dispenser to the base. This is much stronger and I realized it may be useful to disassemble this to clean it at some point.

I figured out the range for each of the servos to power it’s part of the driving sequence. I wrote a little python program to just run through four cycles. I tested it with real treats. For the most part it works fine and the ramp inside performs as expected, it can clear all the treats now. However, the narrowed area where the ramp is causes the treats to bind up there. They are a little moist and stick together enough to get suspended in that gap. I’m going to have to put another small servo with a kicker somewhere in that area to twitch the food to keep it moving. But, overall it has been very sucessful.

Here is the video of the test run:

Next up is solving the clogging problem then mounting it on the robot somehow.