[sudo-discuss] robot arm

so, sudoroom has a robot arm now. It took a lot of people and creativity to get it in! I have started sorting out the control box and I am removing the "spare" box that housed motor controllers for the assembly line, which are seperate from the robot itself. The robot's last job was building parts for bridges! The robot and its control box (and the 48 foot long cables that connect them!) are dirty! If you want a good start with this thing, consider grabbing a towel and some soapy water and cleaning it off. Nobody likes a dirty dog that marks you when you play with it. At present, the robot arm itself is in the CENTER of sudoroom. I know this is not necessarily a good place for it once it's working, but since the pile of doors is still where it is (because we still don't have a shop-vac to clean out the place where the doors are going?) and I didn't want to put it by the wall (because then the cords wouldn't reach) and I have to return the pallet jack today (the only way to move it) it will have to stay there until we decide on wednesday where to put it. And then we will need to borrow a pallet jack from somewhere... I propose that we keep it in the middle of the room until we get it to work at all, because until then (and i don't know how long it will be) it is totally immobile and thus not dangerous. But we will have to talk about it at the meeting, of course. But my personal opinion is that we should keep it in the middle where it is, after tuning its control systems to make it impossible for it to move rapidly enough to hurt anyone. But I realize some people will object to that suggestion and I respect that. If you are interested in doing things with the robot arm, such as learning how it works and how to operate it, let's talk about it. Also, we can start thinking about what to use it for! I think we should find a material (such as wax) that we can allow it to extrude like a 3d printer (but with a large bead) so that we can practice making big things. Also the people who sold us the robot can turn wax into bronze... -jake