What Really Grinds My Gears...

The arm design we used to reach the second level of the rack had a gear ratio of 25 to 1 in order to provide the power we needed to reach the height with the weight of the grabber. An unfortunate side effect of this gear ratio is the large amounts of stress it puts the parts under. We experienced this first hand when the axle our arm was on was twisted and bent by the force, forcing us to cut it in order to replace it with a new axle that can better handle the stresses.