Wooden hydraulic mechanical arm

[YoungPhysicist]

TL;DR

A wooden mech arm powered by four pairs of syringes

Yesterday, I found a device in the recycle bin of our school’s art classroom. It’s a broken wooden hydraulic mech arm someone built a couple years ago.

After some fixing and filling the syringes with water again, this is how it looks now:

Here’s a video of it working:


I am aware of something very similar being sold on the market, but this is a homemade one, so really cool in my opinion.

 

[Dr.D]

Whoever built this did a very nice job. It is a fine demo rig.

 

[anorlunda]

I agree, it would be an excellent demo of robotics.

It is so common that novice robot builders get hung up on questions of how much voltage, how much current. What this demo does very well is to show what can be done, and how it works, and that the power could be supplied in many ways. How to provide the power should never be the first question for a proposed robot.

Thank you for sharing that @YoungPhysicist .

 

[YoungPhysicist]

Thank you!

 

[Guineafowl]

You could even make up a set of smaller and larger control syringes, to demonstrate the differing mechanical advantage vs range of travel.