I think you are missing the one big cost of both of these systems. The gas.
If you use a HP system you will probably get 4/5 flips before it needs regassing. This means you will need a filling station and your own CO2 tank on hand. This cost about $300/yr (last time I checked to rent) + $35 a refill or you can buy one outright from your local home brew shop for $300 and swap it for $70. This is higher than your budget for the robot and you are probably going to need a refill after every event to be safe.
The other thing you aren't taking into account is all the pressure testing and high pressure tubing which is required in a HP system. You can't just use air compressor hose and you will need to have your RAM and the rest of your system professionally tested before you actually use it at an event.
Keep in mind this is your first robot and you have plenty of other things which are going to go wrong before hand. So adding to that the danger of high pressure is not something which is a good idea.
I have shown with naked turtle that you can have a relatively effective flipping robot with just an air compressor in the robot this is the simplest, easiest and cheapest way to do it. If you really want to do it for cheap I would look into using a shuttle valve out of rubber like you see in spud guns. (Glen can prolly help you here) And probably PVC pipe from bunnings with a plunger as a ghetto ram.
Joined: 18 Jun 2004
Posts: 3842
Location: Queensland near Brisbane
Yes, I mean the leverage ratio. For example, If the distance from your fulcrum to the ram was 100 mm the distance from the ram to the tip of the flipping arm would be 800 mm. If 50 mm, then 400 mm. _________________ So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems
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