When constructing the mini-arm and deciding how to attach the counterweight, we knew that the further away from the servo the force was acting, the more help the servo would receive. In order to maximize this moment, we attached the counterweight at an angle at the very end of our mini-arm. This caused the moment to act past the length of the mini-arm and avoided touching the ground with the counterweight.
When we changed the position of the servo, we had some difficulty orienting the mini-arm. At first, though we had the servo mounted to the left side of our structure, we had the mini-arm lifting from the right side of the weight. This caused the mini-arm to fall off much of the time and was not efficient. To allow the mini-arm to lift the weight from the left side, we had to somehow move the servo away from the arm a little bit. In order to do this, we found some long screws and used a bunch of washers to move the servo to its ideal position. This way we did not have to change our entire arm.
