Devlog 1
Intro: My name is Ira Morgan, I have grown up always interested in how things work and fixing thing. From a young age i remember helping my dad change the brakes on his car. I have always been very interested in technical projects and tasks. I love building things weather that is a book case or a Lego set. This summer i have decided to step it up a notch.

I have made it my summer mission to build a robotic arm from scratch. I will be using NEMA 23 stepper motors with advertised 3Nm of holding torque being controlled by TB6600 Stepper motor drivers and an Arduino hooked up to either my laptop, a RPI5 or my PI400. Most if not all parts will be 3d printed on the Bambu lab X2D, for testing i will be printing in PLA the actual model and parts that need to be more durable will be printed out of PETG-CF.

As of right now I have the base rotating mechanism CADed, i have a general idea of smaller hardware i will need for it, it will use a bearing stack some thrust bearings and 2 of these stepper motors. i have concerns of my own but i am actively consulting engineers to help me with this project. (a big thanks goes out to them)

I have recently started to code partially. I am completely new to coding so most of my knowledge is me asking on google and me finding a forum of what the code should include and then i implement that into my code however i need. I want to try my best to stay away from vibe coding, I’ve had ideas for cool apps and stuff using chat gpt but this time i want to learn it my self and learn the proper syntax and what to use when and how different aspects work together.

I have some of the basics i need coded on the Arduino side of the code, basic Pin mapping: Enable, Steps, Direction, i have also set all of these pin modes to output. I have a simple If, then statement to when i hit an enable button all of the steppers can be controlled but if the button hasn’t been turned to the enable mode than any inputs will not move the arm. This is mainly a safety feature, i want this arm to be strong so i do not need to end up hurting people.