Robotic Arm

First off, who doesn’t want a robotic arm? In all seriousness, 3D printers have significant potential for automation. Tasks like unloading prints, loading prints, placing inserts, magnets, and weights are all potential use cases.

I have extensive experience operating robotic systems using pre-written libraries, but for this project, I plan to take the long road to learn how to write libraries and develop the hardware from scratch. This project is very much a work in progress.

So far, I have been developing control systems for the actuators that will be used on the arm. I designed a test fixture that holds a Nema 17 stepper motor with an absolute encoder mounted on the back (Figure 1). I have also written a library that can perform position control and am currently working on torque control.

To run the actuator testbed, an electronics testbed was needed. We are currently using a computer power supply, microstep stepper motor controllers, and a microcontroller mounted on a laser-cut piece of wood (Figure 2).