Robotic Arm

thingiverse

This is my first major prototype project ever made with my Ender-3. I'm really proud of how it looks. As I said, it's my first project, so it's not perfect. But it's still a fun desktop toy to play around with. If my rough calculations are correct, it could carry a load of about 140 grams on the end of its fully extended, horizontal arm (which is 40 cm long with a gripper that weighs 20 grams and has a length of 5 cm). But this quickly increases as we reduce the working distance. Here's what I printed: * Two arm parts * One shoulder piece * One grip connector * One upper plate * One ground plate * Eight cylinders * Eight spacing caps I used these motors: * A servo motor (20 kg/cm) - a Tower Pro MG-958 could also be used. * A Tower Pro MG-996 for the first part of the arm * Two Tower Pro SG-5010 motors bolted onto the bottom of the upper plate and the arm with the gripper connector I used these screws: * For the motors, I used the screws that come with them together with a printed screw spacing cap. * For the horns, I drilled out the holes and then used screws I had lying around the house. Here are some notes to keep in mind: * I use the cylindrical horns that come with the motors. * Sometimes the cutout is a bit too deep, making the horn not touch the part when screwing it down. A washer fixes this issue. * All the holes need to be pre-drilled and aren't included in the prints. * Use screws that fit properly. * The gripper-coupling can hold a Tower Pro micro servo, but you'll need to file out the part a bit to get the wiring through the hole. * The motors are fully assembled with brass-looking tubes in the rubber cubes. If you want to make this yourself, I'd be honored. Don't let my text discourage you - it didn't take long to assemble everything. If you have any advice on the subject, feel free to leave a comment. And if you decide to make it, please share a picture of your finished project! Edit: I changed the shoulder motor to one with higher torque after it broke due to excessive voltage. The new motor (20 kgcm) has more stable movement when controlled with potentiometers.