Basic Flipper Hinge Question

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Southernhammer
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Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2018 7:16 pm

Basic Flipper Hinge Question

Post by Southernhammer »

Hi all,

In the process of building an AW flipper but have yet to manage to get one working properly. How are your AW flipper robots hinged at the back? I'm struggling to work out an easy and reliable way just to get a basic flipper held on and able to move freely.

What would you recommend to someone new here?

Thanks
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peterwaller
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Re: Basic Flipper Hinge Question

Post by peterwaller »

I tend to use a 2 or 3 mm diam carbon fiber rod right across the robot and hang the flipper on that. You can get short bits on ebay quite cheap.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CARBON-FIBRE ... SwirZTtBOB
If you have weight to spare you can use piano wire.Image
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tomboys
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Location: Milton Keynes

Re: Basic Flipper Hinge Question

Post by tomboys »

For my first antweight I used a ready made plastic hinge:
https://www.homecrafts.co.uk/mini-hinge ... QAQAvD_BwE

Definitely not a perfect solution, but it works as a lower tech answer - and it looks good combined with polycarbonate 8)
Tom Boys (Team Tomb)
Up the Antie - Flipper
Push Comes to Shove - Shovebot
Vertigo - Vertical spinner
Bar Bar Black Sheep - Bristlebot (planned)
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LimaHotel
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Re: Basic Flipper Hinge Question

Post by LimaHotel »

I too somewhat uncreatively use hinges to hinge my flippers. 1/2 inch brass hinges, available from practically any hardware store. They come with little pins - I drilled the pin holes out to 2mm and secured them with m2 nuts and bolts.
Another thing I've done is just lined up 3mm holes spaced with a washer and secured them with an m3 bolt and nylock nut. I've never actually done a hinge like that for a flipper, but it's how Jiggy is hinged. These are old pictures of Jiggy and Flippy btw, but they're the best ones I could find of the hinges.
(and yeah, the Barnitts hinges had been mis-packaged. They're definitely 1/2 inch)

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A grabber? I CHALLENGE IT WITH JIGGY!
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Kyro
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Re: Basic Flipper Hinge Question

Post by Kyro »

i use my servo as one half of my hinge and use polycarbonate as the other half.

i make an L shaped bracket and drill a 3mm hole at the same height and position as the centre of the servo horn, then i have 90° bends in my flipper panel, one with another 3mm hole which attaches to the L bracket through the first hole with an m3 bolt with a nut to keep it in place. on the other side, i attach the servo horn with 2 small screws.

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you can get more than 90° of actuation if your tx allows you you set end points higher...

advantages are weight and space saved by not needing seperate hinges and also not needing a linkage.

disadvantages are your flipper is set at whatever speed/power your servo is set at (you can play with linkage to gain increased speed or power depending on the way you set it up)

i did have just a single link attaching the servo to the flipper panel via a single arm, but this was a weak point when meeting high kenetic energy weapons and therefore, i do not recommend this.
Image

there are a few different options here now so hopefully one of us came up with the answer you needed...

one final way for hinges (i have never used) is simply holes and cable ties... i cannot give any more info regarding the reliability of this way, but its 1 last one to consider.

Luke
Team Rocket
Trappist 1(4wd grab 'n' lift)
Ton 618 (4wd expanding bot)
Io(4wd flipper)
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MarkR
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Re: Basic Flipper Hinge Question

Post by MarkR »

For completeness -

I avoided having a hinge completely and on Stacie, I just pivot the whole flipper arm on a pair of N20 motors with a coupler I made

Image

Image (Difficult to see as the part is matt black due to being made of PLA+Carbonfibre)

So essentially there is nothing except for the alignment of the motors keeping the pivot true, which seems to work ok.
Robots: Betsie - RaspberryPi controlled flipper bot with gyro stablisation - too clever for her own good?
Stacie - tidy flipper; 4wd driven by hair bands
Southernhammer
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Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2018 7:16 pm

Re: Basic Flipper Hinge Question

Post by Southernhammer »

Thanks everyone! Have plenty of things to try but mainly I know now not to be afraid of just using tiny hinges from hardware stores here so will have a look.

Had tried mounting directly to the servo but just didn't seem to have enough power to do much.
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Kyro
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Re: Basic Flipper Hinge Question

Post by Kyro »

which servo are you using?

i use the tower pro mg92b with 3.5kg/cm torque at 6v which has plenty of power... its not the fastest servo at .08/s but its pretty cheap (around £7 on servoshop) and reliable.

if you had a bigger budget you can pick up servo's which have power and speed to really flip... but these are nearly 4x the price of the servo i use...

one that I hear is good (no personal experience with it though) is the EMAX ES9256 at around £25. it has 3kg/cm torque at 6v at .06/s or if you run direct from 2s it has 4.5kg/cm at .05/s

using linkages will allow to to play with speed and power if your current servo's lack the power for direct link although i would say its better to start off with a servo which has the power you need to begin with...

hope this helps

Luke
Team Rocket
Trappist 1(4wd grab 'n' lift)
Ton 618 (4wd expanding bot)
Io(4wd flipper)
MichaelG92
Posts: 71
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 8:10 am
Location: Surrey

Re: Basic Flipper Hinge Question

Post by MichaelG92 »

Hi tomboys, did you use one hinge or two for your flipper? And do you know how much each hinge weighs?

Thinking of using these for my front hinged flipper (which will be polycarb so should go quite well with it!).
tomboys wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 3:02 pm For my first antweight I used a ready made plastic hinge:
https://www.homecrafts.co.uk/mini-hinge ... QAQAvD_BwE

Definitely not a perfect solution, but it works as a lower tech answer - and it looks good combined with polycarbonate 8)
Michael - Team MG Robotics

Fledgling Surrey based roboteering team

Antweights:

MicroNewton - flipper
ArmamAnt! - pusher
GFB - flipper (under construction)
Fight or Flight - flipper (under construction)
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tomboys
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Location: Milton Keynes

Re: Basic Flipper Hinge Question

Post by tomboys »

They're each about 6 grams. I only used one, as they are relatively big (about 3cm long).
Tom Boys (Team Tomb)
Up the Antie - Flipper
Push Comes to Shove - Shovebot
Vertigo - Vertical spinner
Bar Bar Black Sheep - Bristlebot (planned)
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