3 DOF Open Source Robot Arm Is Just The Beginning

Arm3-v1

[Dan Royer] of Marginally Clever had a dream. A dream to build an open-source 6 DOF robot that anyone can make! To do so, he’s been learning robotics for the past two years, and has just finished the first step — he’s designed and built an open source 3 DOF palletizing robot!

He’s based this little guy off of the commercial ABB 460 palletizing robot, which is a tried and true industrial robot. It features all laser cut parts, a few nuts and bolts, some stepper motors and an Arduino UNO for the brain. He’s released all of the design files on Thingiverse and the firmware on GitHub — yet another project we’d like to build if only we had a laser cutter!

And don’t worry, the Arduino UNO is only being used for this first prototype — he’s already started writing code for the RUMBA (Reprap Universal Mega Board with Allegro-driver) controller for revision 2.

Stick around to see it write its first greeting with a marker — Hello World!

It’s an exciting project and we can’t wait to see further development! Keep up the good work [Dan]!

Maybe we can teach it manually in the future too!

 

11 thoughts on “3 DOF Open Source Robot Arm Is Just The Beginning

  1. I am guessing that you could print out the parts on paper and glue to plywood then cut out all the parts on a scollsaw. Before laser cutters that was the way to make parts like those.

  2. It strikes me that you don’t have to give up just because you don’t have a laser cutter. All those parts can be cut just the same with regular woodworking tools, or even hand tools. A jigsaw (the handheld tool, not a scroll saw) and a drill press should be all you need. Just print the plans, tape sheets of paper together if needed, spray adhesive to stick them to wood, and cut away. A bandsaw might help on the gears, but you can still do that with a jigsaw too.

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