MAE3 Robotic Arm
A rack-and-pinion extension mechanism for a course robotics competition.
| Where | MAE3, UC San Diego |
|---|---|
| When | 2025 |
| Team | Four students; I led the mechanical design |
| Tools | Fusion 360, AutoCAD, laser cutting, sheet metal, drill press, 3D printing |
| Result | 28″ of vertical extension, stowed inside a 10″ cube |
My team of four had to build a robot that could pick up rings and place them on the higher rungs of a 3-foot model of UCSD’s Sun God statue, starting from inside a 10-inch cube. Reaching the top rungs meant roughly tripling our height from the start.
I led the mechanical design, centred on the primary extension mechanism: a rack and pinion with a 2:1 reduction, laser-cut acrylic gears and walls, and a bent sheet metal base. Packing the rack along the cube’s diagonal gave me 11 inches of travel (with a good amount of tolerance!) while still stowing legally, and the mechanism reached 28 inches of vertical extension while carrying the ring load.
I also developed the team’s top-level assembly in Fusion 360, as well as doing most of our fabrication, documentation and hand calculations.