Devlog #1

Hello everyone,
welcome to devlog 1 my project: Building a 6 Axis Robotic Arm

Background info:

In this project I am first building an AR4-MK4 robotic arm. During this process I will be documenting all my hardships and breakthroughs. Then I will walk through all the programming
of the arm.

Once I am done building and programming the robotic arm I hope to build, attach, and program
a robotic hand to the arm.

Before I started the project I first received all the metal parts and electronics. Then for about 2
weeks I printed all the 3d pieces required to build the robot on a bambu labs X1c.

What I have accomplished:

1. So far in the first week of my project I have attached and mounted the metal base of the
   arm to the 3d printed base and the box where all the electronics will be held.
2. I mounted the motor controllers into the electronics box. Then I wired the power of all the
   control boards to a central power port with a power switch.
3. I mounted the motor for the first axis to the base of the metal base. Then I attached the gears to both the first axis and the motor. After that I linked both gears with a belt which I
   tightened sufficiently.
4. I mounted the frame for the second axis onto the first axis in the base.
5. Finally I began the process to wire the first motor into the control board (the motor already has encoders built into it which is why there are so many signal wires to plug attach to the control boards.)

Remarks:

1. Because this arm uses tapered bearing in the first and second joint I had to insert the first part of the bearing into the metal joint. Due to the metal joint being benign created with accuracy if the bearing frame was not perfectly aligned with joint insert it would get stuck and not come out. To remove the stuck bearing I got a wooden spatula and gently tapped on the bearing on all sides until it came out. I found that the best way to insert the bearing frame was to lay the bearing frame on a table and gently press the joint around the frame coming down onto it.
2. When wiring the power and motors to the controls boards unless you have a very small slotted screwdriver (which I had) you can’t tighten the wires into the boards because they are so close to each other in their case. I recommend you loosely mount the controller boards to the base so you can shift them over when tightening the wires into the
   controller boards later on.
3. When wiring the power port, switch, and fan, the included case forces you to solder the connection from the power port and the switch inside the very small case. As a result, to be able to successfully connect the wires inside the 2 inch wide space I recommend you connect them with crimps instead of soldering the connection.
4. When I tried to tighten the belt attached to motor 1 I was unable to insert M3X4 set screws into the first motor mount (J1). The screws should not go through all the way because there was a piece of bent metal blocking the path of the screw on the inside pocket. I assume that piece of metal was bent because the pocket of the mount was CNC’ed then the holes were tapped. As a result the piece of metal was bent inward towards the tapped hole. To fix this I inserted a drill bit and spun it around on a medium velocity until the metal part got dislodged from the tapped hole or just got bent outwards.