Robotic Arm

ARM #06

After a broken 3d printer, fried arduino, and many more hurdles I finally got something that I can test with. This is a control panel I made with python tkinter (I had Claude guide me on how to make the GUI), and it communicates via serial to send over servo angles. It reads whenever you are connected to the esp32 and then enables the Drive Servos button and the Play Recording Button. Once they’re enabled, you can slide the sliders to whatever angle you want and then press “Drive Servos” to move them IRL. Im currently working on the recording and playing robotic arm movements part, so the record, save,load,clear buttons are currently non-functional (will work in future). Also, there is a IK library you can open which will in the future have a range of IK questions you can solve related to the robotic arm. Thats also non-functional but I’ll be working in on it the following devlogs. Mechanically, The robot arm keeps tipping over so I’ll have to redesign the case. So thats all lol.

Next steps:
Fix Tipping over Problem
Make the recording and playing functional
Learn Inverse Kinematics

Assembled! (kinda)

Its been a very very very very long time since I’ve mad e a devlog since I took a break from this project, but heres what happened since. I decided to add another DOF to the project for the wrist rotation. Also I 3d printed and assembled the joints. The servo driver I was using actually had flathead screw terminals. Guess what, I didn’t have a flathead. So I soldered wires to the terminals instead, and hooked them up a drill battery. In doing so, I fried the bootloader on my Arduino and as a result had to switch to ESP32. On the software side, I have the ESP32 communicating with a python app via serial. The python app takes user input of the servo angles and the ESP32 executes them. Next steps are to get the remaining joints on and create a GUI. This week Im planning on implementing some form of inverse kinematics to the roboarm.

My 3d printer broke :(
Okay so Im basically done with the designing part and now I’m actually doing the hardware, problem is my 3d printer decided to stop working or something. During a print, it just stopped extruding filament. I took apart the nozzle assembly and got the jammed filament out of the nozzle and put it back on print. Turns out the nozzle wasn’t secured enough and scratched the print bed + attacked me by ejecting a 3d print straight off the bed and into my face. I’ll try to troubleshoot this asap, but for now I’m going to do the software of my robotic arm. I’m planning on making a python app where u can use sliders to move the robots joints, and also an inverse kinematics part where the app gives you a cartesian coordinate and you have to solve and input the correct servo positions to move it to that coordinate.

ARM #3

Redesigned the waist of the arm, started working on the gripper. This took way too long and I think its mostly because of me not knowing how to use onshape correctly (hey you learn along the way tho). Im going to work to get the gripper fully assembled and ready so I can put it on my arm as the end effector. After that, I can assemble it in CAD and start working on getting my parts ready IRL. I think designing it was easy, it was just very tedious. Software will definetaly be the hardest part of this project. Im aiming to make an App where you can control each servo’s motion using sliders. Additionally, you can give it a coordinate in a 3D plane and it’ll point to that exact spot. I plan to use processing to make that app.

ARM #2

Ok i have most of the joints designed but I’m lowkey worried about the bottom one since its kinda cantilevered but Imma redesign it if it causes a problem in the future. I have the servos all mounted to each joint and the next step is to create the gripper, which I will be doing next devlog. Its coming together all good but the real question is if it can hold up in real life.

ARM #01

Im making my first robotic arm and Im going to design all by myself. However I’m going to draw some inspo from other robotic arm designs too so it’s not entirely going to be off the dome. Currently I’ve been trying to figure out how to get my servo to fit in the base. I didn’t know it was this large (or maybe the cad model i downloaded had the wrong dimensions) I also made a custom servo horn thats basically a circular disk that can be screwed to the output shaft of the servo and then the outer M3 screws can be bolted into the base. I have no idea how Im going to be fastening each part of the arm into each other. Im pretty sure project will be needing a lot of redesigning. but trial and error is good so its whatever