Modular Robot Arm

thingiverse

I am currently working on an improved version with better rigidity and increased span, using 20mm and 30mm aluminum profiles. This way, it can be used as a large-scale SCARA printer, which will make setting up the software much easier since Marlin supports SCARA kinematics natively. This project has been my most thought-out endeavor to date. It contains a set of parts that allow you to build a customized robot. The robot in the pictures features a horizontal SCARA kinematic which allows 360° rotation for its main axis and about 270° rotation for its secondary axis. You can take it as a reference and add structural parts, multiple motors, additional gearing translations, more than two arm segments, etc., whatever fits your use case. There is also an OpenSCAD file to make arm segments of different lengths. Elasticity can become a problem if you set the length too high. In a horizontal orientation, as shown in the pictures, a 500mm long arm with a single row of GT2 pulleys gives in about 5mm for 100 grams of weight. Or you can ditch the pulleys and use 3D printed gears instead. There are many parametric gear designs here on Thingiverse. If you are an Autodesk Inventor user, you can also download the source files and modify the parts. Marlin seems like a good firmware since it allows for custom kinematics to be implemented. Annin Robotics AR2/AR3 software also looks interesting. It started out as a simple carrier that should hold an extruder motor above the effector of one of my 3D printers to turn it into a direct drive extruder, because it didn't have very strong linear rails. Then I added motors, a linear actuator, and now it can be a functional robot. Additional parts: Cable chain: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11978 Cable combs: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2780211 (included in the download section for 1.75mm wires) Demo: https://youtu.be/xumlLFmnNZY Version 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PibS60HisO4