I’ve been lucky enough to have had the pleasure of trying out the new Firgelli Linear Actuator (LA) for a little while now and it’s awesome.  It’s based on one of their pre-existing LAs and is completely NXT compatible.  It connects to the standard NXT motor port like a regular motor and has encoders, too.  The LA comes in two sizes, 100mm and 50mm and extend at an unloaded speed of about 12mm per second. 

The thing that struck me the most is the accuracy of it.  With 200 encoder ticks over the entire length of the LA for the 100mm version, you can position the end point with a 0.5mm accuracy.  You’ll have a hard time trying to duplicate that level of accuracy with the regular motors. 

I took some pictures of the 100mm version next to some studded beams so you can get an idea of how big it is in its retracted and extended positions.  You can click on the images for a larger version.

There is an easy to use NXT-G block available on the website that has built-in stall detection to protect the LA.  Danny Benedettelli has written an NXC library for it and you can expect a driver to be included in the next release of the 3rd Party ROBOTC Driver Suite.

For more technical details, have a look at the datasheet which you can find here: [LINK].

I’ll be posting a video of my little test robot in the next few days on my blog, so keep an eye out for that.