Such an obvious title…
Late last year I started looking for a sub-$1000 6-axis robot I could use in my videos & tutorials. I wanted something that had better / smoother motion than the low-cost educational models that are all over the internet, but it’s difficult to evaluate performance from a online videos (usually from the vendors themselves). Almost due to this lack of information, I started focusing on a desktop model from a company called Elephant Robotics.
Truth be told, the few online reviews I could find did not seem promising. There were 2 on Amazon, which appear to have been removed when I looked for them later. From what I recall they highlighted “bad to program” and “bad instructions” as key features of the unit. Undaunted, and perhaps a little foolishly, I made the purchase.
Elephant Robotics MechArm 270 Pi
I also purchased the optional gripper for the unit:
It had about a month’s lead time, so, about 4 weeks later, a box arrived. Here’s the quick unboxing video:
Out of the box, it seemed well made and finished. I didn’t purchase the optional adaptor base, but quickly designed a simple printable adaptor base that allowed me to fix the robot to a 150mm square optical board.
You can purchase your own 150mm board on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3RRqg0q
I’ve uploaded the adaptor STL file to RoboFiesta LLC’s Github repository:
https://github.com/robofiestaLLC/Mecharm/blob/main/elephantbase.stl
Now that the robot is set up securely on a stable platform, all that’s left to do is power it on and start programming… right..?
And that’s a whole other blog. More than one, actually…
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