Hi everyone I am currently animating some mechanical components and I created a bone structure and then painted weights my issue is I can seem to find a way to move the bones or joints in pose mode. I have a rotating arm that needs to slide over and lock into another position but currently all I can do is rotate about the joint. Any help or experience that can get me the same affect would be much appreciated.
Bones can only rotate around the “joint” to their parent. If you want to translate a bone, un-parent it.
This thread should be under “rigging and animation” rather than “animations”… I suppose a mod will come by and fix that eventually.
Anyhow…
Switch to edit mode for the armature (doesn’t work in object or pose mode), select the bone you don’t want attached at the joint, and under bone properties in the relations grouping - uncheck “connected”. Whether or not a bone is connected to it’s parent is a separate property. This should allow for free translation of a bone while still maintaining the parent-child relationship otherwise.
Whaoo, I didn’t know the “connected” property ! Thank you ! 
I am not that much familiar with the animated tools.I will share some ideas and information.Many animation related information are available on the internet.