May 18 - May 28: Began CAD (Base & First stage)

Base

The base consists of a bottom piece, which holds the Arduino Uno and the Stepper Motor to control the bottom rotation. There are two covers, one to cover the motor and hold it in place, and one to cover the Arduino. The covers are screwed on using M3 Screws and heatset inserts in the bottom. The motor cover includes a hole for wires, and the other side includes holes for plugs (second image). The motor cover also includes a ring-shaped cutout sized for a 17x30x9 Thrust Bearing.

Stage 1

Mounted to the Stepper motor is the 3-piece housing for the first stage, which includes an MG996R Servo and an AS5600 Magnetic Encoder. The first stage is mounted onto the stepper motor in the base with a shaft collar.

The housing also contains areas for the wires

May 28 - May 30: Stage 2

The second stage of the arm contains a mount for the servo attachment from stage 1, a spot to put the magnet for the encoder in stage 1, and a place to mount the next servo and encoder on the end, similar to the mechanism in stage 1. At firt I wanted long stages, so I made two threaded parts that screw together, although I feel like this might make the arm too big and limit the range of motion, so I might shorten it later.

Like stage 1, stage 2 contains internal holes for wires. Wires go through the center of the arm and come out of the bottom, where they line up with the hole in the top of stage 1. This might needed to be modified later because I want to make sure there's enough slack in the wires, but it's good for now.

June 16

I've been busy for the past couple of weeks, but I'm back now.

Shorten Stage 2

The segments on the arm seemed too long with the two part threaded extension, so I made it one part. The central part is 180mm tall (the tallest my printer can print) and the bottom part to attach to the servoe below and the top part with the next servo are unchanged. It's now 296mm center-to-center from the servo below to the one above (it was 416mm before).