You can sign up here for beta testers (there are a few spots left: https://forms.gle/sZqHVLPoMJxuVAyJ9 This is general form for people interested in control boards, kits, or whole robots: https://forms.gle/XkSvStwnQxw1f8xL8
My biggest question is the full cost for the PAROL6. Their BOM link is 404.
I can build the AR4 completely for less than $2000, and for education, that's a very small price for a semi-useful, full 6 axis arm. (Currently, to give a comparison, one of my suppliers is offering an educational cobot solution for $40,000. Yes, it's truly "industrial," and is a complete self-contained solution, though it's only capable of 2kg if I recall correctly. This was what they were pushing for the educational market.)
As someone who is trying to implement robotic training in education, with a budget that approaches zero, I just need something cheap that students can hack/break/fix without costing a fortune in maintenance costs.
One of the cool thing about the AR4 is that it can come as a complete kit, either as 3d printable or aluminum frame. and they work with Steppers Online to provide the steppers and drivers as one package. If you work for a school system, this type of solution solves a lot of logistical issues.
That said, if this thing is truly low cost, let's say under $1000, for it's capabilities, it could be a very nice project.
Looks like they forgot to update the link.
Being pedantic this isn't either, there's no CAD source files, only stl files. Hopefully that's just an oversight.
My major issue is that I can easily build stuff. The puzzle keep my brain on the job - but then I don’t know what to do after I’ve checked it works :D (i.e my various RC project are there, but then what ? I’ve built a rover, can do some automated stuff, but not very useful a the end…)
If the main purpose is for the robot to do something - the DIY approach is more likely to suffer issues that, without support, may discourage students because they're fussing with/fixing the bot instead of doing the thing.
Out of curiosity, what's the $40k kit you mentioned?
Educational packages are all over the place (some seem to be price-gouging, frankly) but the low-end (in terms of payload + reach) of commercial/industrial cobots is getting pretty affordable.
But I basically now operate in Bureaucratic Hell, and I have to figure out a way to get the equipment to teach my students. And due to changes in how my organization operates, ironically enough, I've found that getting the "professional/educational/industrial" products is often not the right decision.
One of the worst things that can happen is that we buy a $250,000 piece of equipment. The administration will never ever budget for the cost of maintenance, consumables, tooling, training, everything else required to successfully operate it. Within a year, you're stuck with a $250,000 piece of equipment sitting in a corner collecting dust, that is always shown to VIP's on tours as the latest in greatest in what we offer. Oh, and it's so expensive, we're not going to allow students to use it anyway, because we can't let them break it.
And it's amazing, they won't have funding for that $100 tool I need to teach the students and use everyday, but every year they'll manage to find $100,000 to spend, a week before the end of the fiscal year, which we have to spend immediately, but it can only be spent on certain items, like the things that I don't actually need. Welcome to public technical education in America. (Sorry, obviously, you unintentionally touched a nerve.)
But if I can get something that costs $2000, well, I can either fix it myself, or better yet have the students do it I will take something that I know is sustainable, that students can actually put their hands on and operate over that white elephant every day of the week.
In reality, this is all moot. No matter the cost, my budget is effectively zero at the moment. But I can hope.
The $40k was a Universal Robots UR3e I believe. The vendor put it on a cart as a portable, self-contained system.
If anyone has some pointers on other recent projects in the space, I'd love to hear about them!
As one can see the last commits are a few years old, and in the issues there are a few robot arms that I haven't worked in yet, which I want to do soon. However, I'd largely attribute the lack of activity to me not actually seeing a lot of new robot arms popping up. If there are any I'm missing or resources where one might regularly find some, I'm eager to hear about them and add them to the list!
Also the BOM info is gone.
Very impressive repeatability and very smooth movement for a 3d printed arm.
I wonder how the rigidity holds up over time. Working at a robotics company, the mechanical engineers had to overcome quite some challenges to find a compromise between, precision, speed and repeatability.
And that was with a metal frame.
If you're talking something like carbon fiber reinforced nylon, it's probably a bit better. If you move to something like Markforged's fiber-strand reinforcement it'd get even better. And then there are the SLA/SLS solutions, like Formlabs "rigid" material, which I think would be a very interesting material to try for this.
I think at the end of the day, you need to keep in mind this is an educational robot, not an industrial robot. If it can maintain 0.050" of repeatability, that would probably be good enough for a lot of use cases (but of course, that depends on your use case.)
Maybe this is a project where I can put the random collection of components to use which lying around in my basement.
Not exactly to spec but that's the spirit I think.
Quote from the manual:
> Screws are in this example M3 screws and holes are undersized to 2.7-2.8mm that means that when we screw in the screws we are tapping holes in 3D printed parts.
> There are multiple benefits to this:
> ● Connection is strongest compared to tapping holes with a tap or using brass inserts
> ● It is simple and fast
> ● No need to prepare the hole, it can be printed undersized
> Cons are that you can’t disassemble it a lot of times. In case you feel screws slipping in the hole. Put some super glue in the hole and wait for it to cure. After that re tap the hole.
If you have something you want to reassemble frequently, use inserts. If you're putting it together once and intend to use it that way for a long time, threadforming works fine.
[0] http://www.jeff-z.com/pinball/toys/armatron/armatron.html
btw ultrasonic cleaners are like miniature dishwashers and having one near my office room is very convenient for cleaning hardware compared to using the full-size dishwasher in the kitchen. Only disadvantage is that it needs soundproofing
Fill with water & soap, insert dirty dishes.
Then when you head out for work in the morning, turn it on. let it buzz for 30 minutes or so, and then have a separate actuator drain the dirty water, refill and drain a second time as a rinse, and then drain again to let dry.
That would be what, $1200 in parts and a season of testing to make work?
