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A lot of progress, a little documentation

A project log for Open-Source 6-Axis Robotic Arm

A completely-open, scratch-built PUMA arm with 24" reach and 1lb payload

colin-kingsburyColin Kingsbury 11/04/2016 at 03:390 Comments

While I haven't updated this project or my mine website in over a year, that's mainly because I've spent most of my free time focused on building and testing and iterating, rather than documenting my progress. The truth is the past year was a pretty rough one for me, as I lost someone very close to me, and then a month later got the lease on my shop yanked out from under me, forcing me to focus on relocating rather than building for a few months.

But all things pass, and by late spring I was settled in again (I was fortunately able to find a second affordable small industrial space in Boston, which required a lot of luck) and since then I've worked through a couple iterations of the control electronics, which are not done but are improving, and the third or fourth version of the gripper, which looks like it might be the one that works. I have some video of that recorded and will be loading up to Youtube soon.

At this point, I think I could have the arm capable of picking an object up as soon as this weekend, which will be a neat milestone considering that I began working on this project in its original form over three years ago. It's not yet ready for primetime--the electronics are still very messy and not well-integrated physically, and I'm still missing a few functions like homing. But it's getting there, and almost all the basic building blocks are working.

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