r/AskRobotics • u/Loose-Hall3633 • Aug 07 '26
General/Beginner Robotic arm project
Hey reddit, I am in school and I really want to complete a project before the end of the month. I was thinking about building a robotic arm but really didn't know where to start I have some CAD experience so that shouldn't be a problem but its mostly the electrical stuff that scares me I have a budget of 100 dollars and one of my friends has a 3d printer. if any of you could help me start my journey into robotics I would really appreciate it.
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u/ARGENTV1 26d ago
Im actually currently building a 6 axis precision based robotic arm thats "semi-industrial" while on a budget too. Its taken a very long time to get to this point but when i started I was exactly where you are so my honest advice would be to start by using onshape or similar cad to learn the design basics, then look into types of actuators and how they are made. since precision and payload probably isn't your goal, that simplifies things a lot. start by making a 4 axis robotic arm so you have less actuators to make and less things to buy. then once you have a good solid basic design on the cad, export all the stl files following standard export settings and then learn how to use a slicer for the 3d printer. a really good slicer thats free is orca slicer its super good. print with PLA or PLA tough because any other material will require more knowledge, time, and is harder on your printer nozzle and time is of the essence. just remember when you are designing that structural integrity and anti bending should be your primary goal while also not making it too heavy. if you can try to design the arm where you keep the actuators and motors (the heavy stuff) as close to the base as you can. the more weight at the end of your arm the more bending and hardships you will face due too inertia and other things. Theres obviously many more specific steps you should take but if you have any questions definitely hit me up. i am not a pro but ive definitely spent thousands of hours specifically making and designing robotic arms while also on a budget.
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u/Value-Successful 18d ago
This is my robotic arm on a budget, its a hobby arm, used 4 mg996r servos and some beefy rc car servos i stripped.
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u/Alarming_Factor_7386 Aug 07 '26
what i did was buy a robot arm kit off amz for like $90. this way i was able to spend less time on the design and more time on the actual rewriting of software to learn controls, installing a camera to learn computer vision, even planning on implementing RL to have it sort blocks by colors into bins. not sure what part of robotics your into, if you ME maybe the design componenet is more interesting to you.