TheTechnomanc3r
Hello fellow robot enthusiasts! First time poster here, allow me to introduce myself, my name is Gray and I am an artist and inventor based in Los Angeles.
I just wanted to show off my first robotics project of my own design, made in blender and printed on a heavily modified XYZ DaVinci 1.0 3d printer in ABS and Algix ALGA filament. I am also working on a seperate InMoov build simultaneously, with pics and videos on both to come. But my robotic arm is done! I spent months designing, printing, re-designing, and reprinting this, and am very happy with the results! It is fully functional and ready for programming, I'll throw together some code and post the video soon, but in the meantime, here are some pictures! I will be updating the project in this thread for those interested, as well as my upcoming youtube channel "The Technomanc3r". My instagram username is @thetechnomanc3r as well, for more images following my projects.
The arm is powered by 7 servo motors, it has motion in the wrist, each individual finger, and the thumb has two different positions for different tasks. The arm and grip is VERY strong, because of the forearm gearbox design, will be doing a strength test very soon. 
Cheers
Chris.
Those servos you're using will burn out pretty quick, when they do replace them with the ezrobot servos from your developer kit. They're much stronger and very quiet as well!
As for the servos, I think you are totally right! I just used some cheap ones for this proof of concept, I've already started Mk 2 though, which is modeled to fit the better servos.
@Richard R Thank you! Yeah I do plan on putting the STL files up for download, I have to make a few adjustments with the fingers though, they're a little bit loose and occasionally jam against eachother. I fixed this by putting a small washer in the trouble joints, but I would like to fix it in the model before I put them up to download so all your parts fit.
Also, here is a photo of my inmoov project I'm working on simultaneously (I plan on making a full robot to go with my arm here, but I may make an adapter to make it inmoov compatible as well, my main worry is it being too heavy for the inmoov frame) I have the second arm printing right now, but as soon as that's done I'll put a video on this guy as well.
@RichardR Thank you very much! I'll get some updates up as soon as possible! I'm so glad to get so much positive feedback on this project!
We are expirementing with a few wide angle lens upgrades as well. Which will be super useful for tracking by increasing peripheral view
A wide angle lens would be awesome!
The first videos are filmed for my YouTube channel, @thetechnomanc3r and are awaiting editing, I got the arm hooked up to the EZB so easily, this really makes the process so much easier! I was using arduino up until now. so I'll share those here as well either tonight or tomorrow! I am entering a robotics competition to fund my project and get me a college scholarship! So that would be pretty neat!
New upgrades-
- 4 more reliable, stronger fingers with flexible rubber joints, as opposed to 5 weaker fingers with rigid plastic joints
-Stronger, reinforced wrist gear, with dual servos. I found the old single servo design, could rotate the hand with no problem, but struggled when the hand was actually holding something with any weight, so I changed that! Will probably come up with something more "elegant" for mk 2, but this does the job!
-New actuator gear mechanism, allowing the fingers to hold more weight without failing or damaging the servos, my goal is to great the strongest, low cost 3D printable robot arm on the market, while using only consumer-available parts.
-folding, modular design for easy maintenance/part replacement.
- smaller, more compact design and reinforced with steel rods. This thing is a tank! While still remaining relatively lightweight.
That's all for now! The rest of the robot coming soon. I am on hold until I get a printer better suited for stronger and flexible materials. Along with my separate InMoov robot build!
The arm folds open for easy access!
And unfortunately... here is what happened to the last one. It just began rottign and falling apart one day as I was testing it, I kept trying to patch it with acetone, but that jut made it worse (must not have been pure ABS, some luck huh?)
I am entering this robot arm in a robotics contest and scholarship application that really means a lot to me, so I'm in a bit of a hurry and the deadline is this week. What power supplies are you all using? I'm totally okay with really any option whether that's a different battery or wall plug, as long as it works, its crunch time now! I was really counting on the servos that came with the kit to work with the board and power supply included!
As for the power supply - can you provide more details? How many volts and amps? Have you looked at the power supply tutorial? Lots of great advice there!
http://www.ez-robot.com/Tutorials/UserTutorials/163/1
And
http://www.ez-robot.com/Tutorials/UserTutorials/170/1
And its just an adjustable desktop power supply, I didn't have a suitable battery in my parts bin and I was just eager to get my arm moving! I'll attach pictures and full specs when I've cooled down from frustration a little and go back to the workshop, I think I messed something up and fried a good portion of the servos in the arm and wont be able to get replacements in time for the scholarship deadline just due to time/finances...
despite not going over 7.4v (I tried to set the power supply to match the output of the LiPo battery in the tutorial, I think I must have messed something up, gonna mess with it in a little bit and see if I can fix it or am just overlooking something)
Oh well I suppose.. Didn't get into robotics thinking there would never be mistakes to be made.
Also working on an adapter to make the hand (minus the relatively heavy forearm design) compatible with the inmoov as well, for the addition of an adjustable thumb.
https://youtu.be/-s_N6l1TrpM