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Robotics in a Carry-On - A conversation starter to bring to C3

Going to 37C3 (my first C3), I wanted to bring a little project to show off the stuff I do. My main Project at the time was my CRS-Robotics A465 Industrial Robot . And while it is quite luggable for a Industrial Robot, it is qutie luggable for an INDUSTRIAL ROBOT

As I was considering what I would do, someone told me to build a Robot and strap it on a helmet. And so I did (apart from the strapping on to a helmet part).

Some design considerations came up. In particular, a low centre of gravity would be particularly important. Given that I don't want to rigidly mount it to something (except for maybe a helmet at some point), it needs to have a relativly wide base to not tip over.

Based on that I made a few decisions. The third axis would be belt driven to keep the motor for it low. Also, both for ease of manufacture and for weight I decided to 3D-Print the parts. I might remake some of the parts in aluminium at some point, but certainly for Prototyping, PLA would be the material of choice.


So, one faithful October evening, I decided to start modeling some stuff. About 8h of work and one falafel later I had a CAD-Model, and ordered parts (at 6AM, not the best time to make finacial decisions). And with the need to wait a few days, I got disinteressted in the project...


So, about three days before Christmas I remembered I had a project I wanted to bring to Congress and I wouldn't have time after the 24th to finish it. So I entered Crunch mode. In those next three days, I got up, went to the hackspace, worked on the Robot, went home slept to repeat the process. Over those three days I worked around 35h. On the 23rd at 6PM, I had first movement!

There were still a few problems that needed fixing, like the drop you can see in the video. That was caused by the controller removing motor current, since the motor wasn't supposed to move anymore. That could be fixed with some configuration, to keep it powered regardless of movement. This however leads to the first axis motor overheating, since it's enclosed in a bunch of low infill plastic.

The fix for this (or my progress on it) can be found here.