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ROBOTICSMECHANICAL DESIGNROS2KINEMATICSFEA

Low-Cost Robotic Arm Development

Date: 2026-07-01

A 6-DOF robotic manipulator arm designed for desktop assembly and research, featuring custom cycloidal drives and ROS2 trajectory control.

System Ref: robot-arm
Author: Daniel Evans
Category: ENGINEERING
Status: ONGOING
Classification: Public Release
Repository Source →

Robotic Arm Design

Project Goal

The goal of this project is to develop a 6-axis arm using hobby-grade equipment, with industry-grade design principles.

In principle, the design targets low-cost BLDC motors with Field-Oriented Control (FOC), drivers, and encoders, back-driveable cycloidal reducers, and 3D printable components.

Out of practicality, my current goal is to prioritise for the lowest cost of hardware, then attempt to assess how good (or bad) we can make a robot arm using these components. Regardless, this should be a good project to get me up to speed at a practical level quite quickly, hopefully with no sticking points.

Progress

This project is currently on hold while I establish myself in Zürich and purchase in some equipment.

Mechanical Development

  1. [COMPLETE] Develop a back-driveable, 3D-printed gearbox proof of concept.
  • Cycloidal drive selected for promising backlash/precision capabilities in 3D prints.
  • 19:1 cycloidal gearbox designed in FreeCAD.
  • Reducer design printed and tested as a standalone unit. Passes back-driveablity requirement.
  1. [IN PROGRESS] Gearbox Optimization & Testing
  • Optimise cycloid geometry parameters for strength, smoothness, backlash, and friction.
  1. [PENDING] Integrate and Test with Electronic Hardware
  • Design mountings for electronics hardware.
  • Evaluate precision, repeatability with motors at different loads.
  1. [IN PROGRESS] Develop modular drive unit, and variants for different joints.
  • Develop a design for a modular joint-linkage system for ease of development.

Control and Drive Development

  1. [COMPLETE] Specify and Purchase BLDC Motors and Control Hardware
  • 4010, and 2208 BLDC motors purchased (Cheapest motors on AliExpress)
  • MKS Dual FOC v3.2, ESP32 based controllers purchased (Cheapest control hardware on AliExpress)
  • 12-bit AS5048 and another type of 14-bit encoder purchased.
  1. [IN PROGRESS] Evaluate Motor and Control Hardware
  • Motors, drivers and encoders running
  • Further testing of FOC algorithms required - yet to get smooth motion out of the current setup.
  • Progress waiting on purchasing a benchtop power supply.

Sofware Development

  1. [PENDING] Investigate existing control system stacks, e.g. ROS2, Python

  2. [PENDING] Attempt to implement inverse kinematics in Python