Design 1

Our first design was going to be a system where the base would be attached to the motor and the arm would be attached with a gear train such that they could move together and if the user wanted to switch direction the motor would have to begin spinning in the opposite direction. 

While simplistic and relatively easy to manufacture this system had several flaws:

• If the user wanted to keep switching directions quickly this would risk damaging the motor as it would have to repeatedly switch direction of rotation on a whim.
• The arm and base were forced to move together thereby removing a significant amount of control