Robotic Arm v3 (2025)
For the past 3 summers I’ve tried creating a desktop-sized robotic arm.
The latest version is a modified edition of Annin Robotics AR4 Mk3 6-axis robotic arm. I learned a lot from copying that design, and most of the modifications I made were to fit the existing structural parts to my off-the-shelf components. However, I never bought the original design files, and rather reverse engineered the design from the STL files freely available online.
This project, although I’ve never fully completed it, nor got it running, taught me so much about stepper motors and bearings assemblies that I still might not complete the latest version because there’s so much I’d change from gaining knowledge along the way.
The plan for this version was to load Klipper (a 3D printer software) onto a raspberry pi, and modify the machine kinematics to trick the software into controlling my robotic arm with GCode. The benefit of this would be that I could have taken advantage of Klipper’s existing acceleration and speed architecture + I could use a 3D printer motherboard for all my stepper controller hardware.
I chose to use a PC case as the electronics box too because it was surprisingly cheaper than some of the other industrial electronics boxes I was looking at, and this was supposed to be a desktop machine after all.
The latest version shown on the right, was assembled in the summer of 2025 in anticipation of my upcoming robotics course. I was hopeful I’d have enough time during the semester to finish the wiring and start looking at the machine kinematics, to practice what I would be learning in school (DH parameters, forward / inverse kinematics). However, my senior year design project took up most of my time, and I shelved this project instead. Thankfully, that robotics course still had some experiential learning aspect to it (labs where we coded in MATLAB programs for the Quanser Qarm), BUT I’m glad I explored this project and tried my hand at it because so much about this project revolved around the mechanical design and complex power transmission assemblies that had it not been knowing this design, I would not have been able to complete come of my other projects on here.
That’s it, I’ll stop praising this unfinished project, moving on.
Robotic Arm v2 (2024)
Robotic Arm v1 (2023)
