Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Working on the Inmoov forearm/bicep actuator.

Gael Langevin's Inmoov robot uses a lead screw/thrust collar arrangement to move the forearm with respect to the bicep. He has noted that the lead screws are rather fragile and has, apparently, bought steel replacements.  I've priced lead screws and thrust collars and they are a substantial expense.  Given the goal of keeping the InMoov robot inexpensive it would seem that we should have another look at the notion of printing a lead screw.

While trying to get the servo for the elbow joint going I discovered that the 12.5 mm lead screw printed in ABS tended to suffer a shear failure in extension quite easily if you didn't have the potentiometer and servo settings just right.  After I'd broken three of them, I decided to take a crack at seeing if I could design a more robust lead screw with a larger cross section that would resist shear failures better.





I finally got a working model going this morning.  The cross sectional area of the screw is about 4.75 times larger than the 12.5 mm original. Basically, doubled the diameter of the lead screw and doubled the diameter.

3 comments:

  1. I want to say it here again, because I did on Thingiverse, this is a very wise goal. I did break a few of mine during my trivious tests.
    But after that they just are doing fine, I didn't have to replace them with steal parts.

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  2. I would like to recommend your article .. you can also refer Helical Planetary Gear Box Manufacturers

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