Wall-e is an old animatronic robot we build for entertainment and social robotics research.
It is also used as a valuable platform for students projects.
Its joints are driven by different kinds of RC servos, and sometimes the servo axle is used as the robot joint. This is a weak design point and we had to change this.
We needed a neck replacement and we found a “Servo Block” kit for Hitec servos which was perfect for our robot. It was 29€ over our budget (0€) but the MechatronicMan foundation helped again.
As we ran out of budget we had to design and build new shoulders.
We originally used a Lynxmotion Servo joint with poor axial bearings but it was not solid enough.
Our new design used “standard” skates ball bearings. with two parts: A 3mm width aluminium plate and a 100mm width bearing support.
The old ISEL cpm 3020 did a nice work with a 3mm single flute straight carbide bit.
After a sandblasting the plate looks very professional! isn’t it?
And the final assembly with the quarter scale RC servo gives a solid joint for our robot.
That’s all. I just wanted to show it.
In the future I’m not using RC servos anymore unless I build a toy robot.
By the way, the joint in action were seen in last post : Animatronic at the Postgraduate Courses presentation 2015-16
Bye.