Construct your personal 4DOF robotic arm on a finances
June thirteenth, 2025
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Robotic arms are very cool and will be fairly helpful, however in addition they are typically costly. That isn’t simply markup both, as a result of the parts themselves are dear. Nonetheless, it can save you some huge cash if you happen to make some sacrifices and construct every thing your self. In that case, you possibly can observe Ruben Sanchez’s tutorial to create your personal 4 levels of freedom robotic arm from scratch.
This design has 4 actuated axes: the bottom, the shoulder, the elbow, and the wrist. Relying on the tip effector you want, a gripper may depend as one other. It has a attain of as much as 80cm and a most payload capability of 350g, which is sufficient to transfer small objects.
Sanchez diminished the price of this robotic arm (in comparison with typical designs) in two methods. The primary is by developing the body from aluminum sheet minimize by hand, with laser markings as a information template. The second is through the use of DC gear motors with exterior encoders for actuation, quite than purpose-built robotic actuators. They received’t have as a lot accuracy or repeatability, however they’re reasonably priced.

An Arduino Due board controls the motors by means of Pololu drivers. The Arduino receives motion instructions from a related PC, which may take a look at the work space by means of an Intel RealSense digital camera connected by the tip effector.
Sanchez supplies the Arduino Sketch to get began, however encourages customers to develop their very own management software program. To assist with that, his writeup consists of some good explanations of inverse kinematics, the maths concerned, and methods to implement it.