Design 3

For the third and final design we set out to rectify the major design flaws we discovered in the previous design. We decided that we must simplify the system as much as possible and realized that we could reduce it to only 2 shafts if we consolidated the functions of the motor and base shafts. This resulted in design three where we would have the motor shaft rotating within a housing a clutch system on either side of the differential to be able to engage either side of the central shaft to rotate the base. The second shaft would be for the arm where, similar to the previous setup, there would be a free gear rotating with each section of the central shaft and a clutch system to sync the rotation of the shaft with the rotation of the respective forward or reverse free gear. This solved the problem of the base rotating away from everything else and centralized the center of rotation for the system with the motor. It also resulted in a much simpler and less cluttered system that would theoretically be easier to build. However, we still had to figure out how we would efficiently engage and disengage the gears. This resulted in the sub-designs documented in the following pages.