Discussion on Mechanical structure design:

It was decided that servomotors be used to actuate all joints because of their ability to hold their position. However, the limited amount of torque the servos can provide presented some serious limitations in the link design. The links needed to be reasonably long to maintain the arm‘s functionality, but at the same time they needed to be as light as possible. Aluminum sheets found to be the appropriate material for link construction due to their lightweight, easy bending and cutting properties While the conceptual design was easy, the actual implementation proved to be the most challenging part of the project. There were several different designs attempted and modifications made to the links throughout the project. The initial design was very light but at the same time, very weak. Since the servomotors are the heaviest component of the arm, all the motors were placed at the base to reduce the weight. These motors used sprockets to drive the gears that are fixed to the arms at the shoulder, the elbow, and the wrist. We found that without proper and more advanced tools, this design could not be done