YOOOOOOOOO Today was officially the first day of working on my robot arm! Here is everything that I have done so far, including any issues or troubleshooting I have had to do. - The first thing that I needed to figure out was what motors are actually gonna be driving this beast. After some intense research, I decided to use two NEMA 17 motors with planetary gearboxes (5:1 for base and 20:1 for shoulder) to power the base and the shoulder joints. I will also be adding a way to turn them closed-loop, although I am still just learning how to do that. For the motors for the rest of the joints, I will be using closed-loop servo Motors. I also did want to mention the reason that I will be using closed-loop motors for all of the joints is that a closed-loop system (Allows for the motor to know where it is) allows for a more precise robot in general. - The second thing that I did was I started working on the CAD. So far, I have logged around 2 hours on LookOut (I am still trying to figure out this whole system because Hackatime does not integrate with Fusion, so I can’t log hours. But the hours I record on Lookout do not update here. Very odd; please lmk if any of you guys know what I am doing wrong) I have finished the base and part of the shoulder but still have a lot more work to do. - My biggest troubleshooting issue I had is that due to the rotation of the arm, if it takes load from the side, then it would practically just tip over. To mitigate this, I wanted to add a pole that connects to a ball bearing at the base of the arm so that instead of the arm grinding against the wall where the thrust bearing sits, the ball bearing takes the load. The reason I didn’t stick to this design is that I wanted to have the shoulder attach to the planetary gearbox via coupler; this meant it would have to be in the center where the ball bearing would have to be. I decided I am going to have to somehow add a ball bearing on the shaft below the coupler that can take the load of side forces instead of the stepper motor taking all the blow. Still figuring out how to actually do it, but I’m sure there is a way. That’s mostly everything!!!! More great things to come!