PAROL6 Desktop Robot Arm

PAROL6 Desktop Robot Arm
github.com

Very impressive repeatability and very smooth movement for a 3d printed arm.

My biggest question is the full cost for the PAROL6. Their BOM link is 404.

I can build the AR4 completely for less than $2000, and for education, that's a very small price for a semi-useful, full 6 axis arm. (Currently, to give a comparison, one of my suppliers is offering an educational cobot solution for $40,000. Yes, it's truly "industrial," and is a complete self-contained solution, though it's only capable of 2kg if I recall correctly. This was what they were pushing for the educational market.)

As someone who is trying to implement robotic training in education, with a budget that approaches zero, I just need something cheap that students can hack/break/fix without costing a fortune in maintenance costs.

One of the cool thing about the AR4 is that it can come as a complete kit, either as 3d printable or aluminum frame. and they work with Steppers Online to provide the steppers and drivers as one package. If you work for a school system, this type of solution solves a lot of logistical issues.

That said, if this thing is truly low cost, let's say under $1000, for it's capabilities, it could be a very nice project.

If you're talking something like carbon fiber reinforced nylon, it's probably a bit better. If you move to something like Markforged's fiber-strand reinforcement it'd get even better. And then there are the SLA/SLS solutions, like Formlabs "rigid" material, which I think would be a very interesting material to try for this.

I think at the end of the day, you need to keep in mind this is an educational robot, not an industrial robot. If it can maintain 0.050" of repeatability, that would probably be good enough for a lot of use cases (but of course, that depends on your use case.)