6-axis Puma Robot project

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1

Hi all

I have an old Puma560 industrial robot. The arm is good and includes 6x 48v dc motors each with a logic level optical encoder. The original controller is well and truly dead but I’d like to get the arm up and running again using a new control system. A quick glance at the Pololu products suggests that there may be some scope to do that. Problems I face are:

The 3 lower joints are 750W and draw considerable current and create current from the inertia of the arm (it’s pretty heavy) when it’s slowing down.

I need to control all 6 axis at the same time in co-ordinated motion. This needs inverse kinematics to work out the speed and direction of each motor at a given time.

My programming skills are very basic so I need help!

Any ideas welcome :smiley:
Thanks!

2

Hello.

We do not have anything that specifically helps with inverse kinematics, so you will probably have to do some programming or look elsewhere. We carry some high power motor drivers that you might consider for your application:

pololu.com/catalog/category/82

Please note that working with such high voltages and currents is dangerous (and that arm looks pretty heavy!). We recommend that you only proceed if you really know what you are doing.