[sudo-discuss] robot arm

[Jake]

so, sudoroom has a robot arm now.  It took a lot of people and creativity 
to get it in!

I have started sorting out the control box and I am removing the "spare" 
box that housed motor controllers for the assembly line, which are 
seperate from the robot itself.  The robot's last job was building parts 
for bridges!

The robot and its control box (and the 48 foot long cables that connect 
them!) are dirty!  If you want a good start with this thing, consider 
grabbing a towel and some soapy water and cleaning it off.  Nobody likes a 
dirty dog that marks you when you play with it.

At present, the robot arm itself is in the CENTER of sudoroom.  I know 
this is not necessarily a good place for it once it's working, but since 
the pile of doors is still where it is (because we still don't have a 
shop-vac to clean out the place where the doors are going?) and I didn't 
want to put it by the wall (because then the cords wouldn't reach) and I 
have to return the pallet jack today (the only way to move it) it will 
have to stay there until we decide on wednesday where to put it.  And then 
we will need to borrow a pallet jack from somewhere...

I propose that we keep it in the middle of the room until we get it to 
work at all, because until then (and i don't know how long it will be) it 
is totally immobile and thus not dangerous.  But we will have to talk 
about it at the meeting, of course.

But my personal opinion is that we should keep it in the middle where it 
is, after tuning its control systems to make it impossible for it to move 
rapidly enough to hurt anyone.  But I realize some people will object to 
that suggestion and I respect that.

If you are interested in doing things with the robot arm, such as learning 
how it works and how to operate it, let's talk about it.  Also, we can 
start thinking about what to use it for!

I think we should find a material (such as wax) that we can allow it to 
extrude like a 3d printer (but with a large bead) so that we can practice 
making big things.  Also the people who sold us the robot can turn wax 
into bronze...

-jake