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> Scorbot er iii robotic arm - working
Scorbot er iii robotic arm - working
I played with the robot arm for about an hour total. During that time I observed several things. First, the arm seems to be in good mechanical shape. I didn't notice anything that concerned me mechanically. Secondly, when the arm is told to "home" itself as part of the initialization it attempts to fold up and doesn't stop when it should. After some research I expect that this is due to mis-adjusted limit switches. However I am by no means certain. It may be something more serious. All of the servos work, I used all of the axis of motion and never once experienced a problem. None of the servos seemed weak. The arm performed very well when I tested it. Honestly, if I could find a use for the thing I would keep it. It is a lot of fun to program and use.
The only issue that I every saw, aside from the homing problem, concerned the shoulder servo when manually positioning the arm. The servo would "buzz" sometimes after the arm had been stopped. It would stop buzzing if I jogged the arm a little bit. I never observed this when running a program, only when manually controlling the arm.
I posted a video of the arm in action on youtube: http:// /watch?v=CV3fzRIUhrc
The controller box has eight inputs and eight outputs. These are supported in the software and can be used to hook the arm up to other equipment or sensors. I had no way to test these capabilities. The controller seems to be in good condition, nothing I saw alarmed me. One nice thing is that the controller interfaces with the computer via a simple serial port. Hooking this up to a modern computer, or even a laptop should be trivial.
The computer has several software packages installed on it. However most of the installed software appears to be mis-configured. Someone with more expertise with the software could likely get all of the software working. I did find a rather nice DOS based environment that despite being DOS proved to be very comprehensive. With this software I was able to create a script to pick up a glass of liquid, lift the glass to another empty glass positioned much higher, pour the liquid into the second glass and then put the now empty glass on the table. I was very impressed with how easy it was to program the arm. Examining the scripting capabilities it was clear how the inputs and outputs could be used to hook this arm up to other equipment and then automate non-trivial processes.
I will include instructions on how to access the software that I found to work.
I found the following resources to be very helpful as I learned about this robot.
http:// /scorbot.html
http:// /ica/icarobotics.nsf/a627249baa970d4b88256bed002284ba/28204fb2a5b24e4988256bfa007f2be6?OpenDocument
In closing this is a very nice little arm, that seems to work nearly perfectly. It does not home properly, but that may be as simple as adjusting the limit switches. However it may be something as complicated as re-wiring part of the arm or replacing the encoder sensors. I have not had time to research or determine the root cause. The computer comes with functional DOS based software installed.
I would be most comfortable selling this to someone with some electronics or robotics experience. This is not a "toy" robot arm, and will require some familiarity with sensors, basic computer programming to keep running.
Also, local pickup is available. The item is located in SE Nebraska near the intersection of Iowa, Missouri and Kansas.
Thank you for viewing my listing. Please do not hesitate to contact me.
Falls City, Nebraska, 68505, USA
