Subject: Re: Parts needed
From: Fielder George Dowding (fgdowding@iceworm-enterprises.net)
Date: Sat Feb 16 2002 - 15:18:18 AKST
Here is a suggestion, humbly submitted by the Chief Iceworm...
Construct a "Tower of Hanoi" using suitably sized wooden (or plastic, which ever is available and lowest cost) dowels. Design the software so that the condition of the "Tower" prior to a "Selection" action keeps the moves required to find a cd-rom to the minimum. After all, the robot can continue to do things after the selected cd-rom is in place and serving files.
Handling the cd-rom's from the center hole could cause damage. The cd's are spun from the center hole, so any burr, distortion, etc. could possibly upset the spindle's positioning fingers which might result in spin-up problems, etc.... At least two other possibilities come leaping to mind.
1. Use suction. The question of squeezing or extending with too much force would be eliminated. The suction would be applied to the top of the cd-rom which would have the least likely chance of doing damage to the edges (inner or outer) or the read surface.
2. Handle at the outer edge. Adam will have to build or afix something to the pincers to permit grabbing the hole (inner edges), so it should not be too much different to afix something to the pincers to permit grabbing the outer edges.
The "Tower of Hanoi" problem is illustrated at:
http://www.cut-the-knot.com/recurrence/hanoi.html
Adaptation to the present problem could take several forms. Here are two forms.
1. Given sufficient space and reach for the maximum total number of cd-rom's involved, construct the number of towers to equal the number of cd-rom's.
2. The minimum number of towers is two.
Cheerio! fgd
On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 11:32:42 -0900
Adam Elkins <LinuxRobot@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Ok, I need to have something for this thing to get the cd's from....any ideas?
> It has to pick them up from the inside....What I was thinking was some old
> cdrom drives, It would push the button to eject the cd, and pick it up....
> Stack them together, and you've got a cd despensing unit.
> Alas, I have no spare cd drives....
>
>
> Adam.
>
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