3D printed SCARA robot
Goal: Design and fabricate a mostly 3D printed SCARA robot and apply forward, inverse kinematics to perform pick and place operations.
Update 1
Designed and fabricated the Z-axis for the robot.
Fiddled with the stepper motors and built a trivial program applying inverse kinematics in Arduino IDE.
Designed and fabricated reliable and robust gripper. Idea for this gripper is from Chris Annin but I did design the gripper myself(Did not just download the stl files).
Tested 3D printed 2GT pulleys(I am not sure about their robustness yet).
Issues so far
2GT pulleys are difficult to get right when 3D printing. Only thing to do is fiddle around with 3D printer setting and keep DFM in mind when designing. If it does not work after many attempts, plan to use actual aluminum pulleys.
Linear bearings I bought are super cheap from amazon and the bearing balls fell from the bearings. Need to redesign parts so I don't have to push too hard/hammer the linear bearings. Plan to split the part and use screws to clamp the linear bearings into the part.
Gripper is actuated using a servo. If gripper grips onto something for too long, servo gets hot and possibly get damaged. Need to implement current sensing ability for the servo so that adequate amount of current is sent to the gripper to grip something. Plan to do this by using a shunt resistor and measuring the voltage across and using V=IR to get somewhat accurate current value.
Update 2
Finished J2 and J3 for the robot.
3D printed pulleys work. I am very happy about this.
Linear bearings still suck. I have something in mind that could possibly help these bad, cheap linear bearings.