Student makes robot in Industrial Technology

Above: Benjamin Ostrem, a freshman, demonstrates how the robot he made in Industrial Technology works.

Below: The robot was made of syringes, PVC pipes, wood, and rubber bands, which created an arm that could pick up items when the syringes were manipulated.

by Elizabeth Ostrem

This semester, the Industrial Technology class was given the tough task of building functioning “robots.” The students worked in pairs from early March until April 13, designing and constructing their mechanical instruments.

 Due to the difficult nature of the assignment, only one student, freshman Benjamin Ostrem, finished on time.

Ostrem’s robot was made largely with PVC pipes, syringes, wood, rubber bands and even a bullet shell casing for a wrist joint. The machine is capable of picking up and depositing small objects by manipulating the water pressure in the pipes. 

Syringes mounted onto a manifold serve as a control panel for the device. By pushing or pulling the syringes, one can adjust the robot’s direction, height and grip. 

Food coloring added into the water helps to identify which syringe hooks up to which pipe. Each syringe operates a different part of the robot.

Ostrem said, “I learned a lot about hydraulics and mechanical advantage from doing this project, and I had fun building it. I think my favorite part of making it was cutting out wooden gears using a band saw with my dad.”

The arm of the robot rotates on a platform situated on top of a gear. The shoulder and elbow joints allow it to move up and down. The claw can grip and pick up objects while the wrist allows the claw to rotate.

Ostrem said the most difficult part of the project was constructing the claw because he had to carve out the pieces using both electric and manual saws. Part of the difficulty was also in finding suitable materials. The gears had to be carved out of wood, and the bullet shell casing for the wrist joint had to fit precisely inside of one of the pipes.

When the robot was finally finished, Ostrem took it for a test and found the results to be “excellent” despite his misgivings.

“Surprisingly, it operated very smoothly the first time after hooking up all the hoses,” he said. “Usually you end up fixing a bunch of problems before it works correctly, but it performed perfectly from the start.”

Industrial Technology teacher Dwain McClure said of Ostrem’s project, “It’s exceptional. It employed all the principles we were working on.”

Following this project, students in the Industrial Technology class will finish the school year by building picture frames, and then will continue on to sheet metal tool boxes, both of which they will be allowed to keep.