Trident

Summary: Trident is a delta robot. A delta robot is a type of parallel robot that is commonly seen in packaging and assembly line factories due to their high speed and precision. This style of robot utilizes the use of parallelograms its arms, allowing the pen to only travel parallel to the base. Trident, seen above, consists of a base mounted above a drawing platform where three servomotors are mounted 120 degrees apart. These motors are each attached to an arm, which is also linked to two threaded rods. The threaded rods from each arm are connected to an end effector, where the pen is mounted. The threaded rods utilize ball joints at their connections, allowing the end effector to move freely above the drawing platform. The way the end effector moves is based on inverse kinematics. The Arduino on the robot receives Cartesian coordinates (x,y,z) and calculates the proper angle of each servo arm to move the end effector. Trident draws the University of Minnesota’s block M, but can be modified to draw almost anything the user desires. The unique thing about delta robots is that they can be modified to do many different tasks, including 3D printing and laser engraving. Much of the components of this robot were 3D printed, which allowed me to design the components myself using CAD software.

Contributions: For this robot, I designed the vehicle using SolidWorks and used rapid prototyping techniques such as laser cutting and 3D printing to construct the body. The hardware and software was all done by myself.

Year: 2015

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Report: NA

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