Drexler Arm

The Drexler Arm

A Drexler Arm is a robotic arm that can be used for advanced assembly of items. Equipped with a clasping mechanism that can grab ICs and components, this could be used to perform assembly of items, potentially even holding items in place while they are attached to the assembly with extrusion.

The design comprises of a series of cylinders, and has a flexible materials shaft down the middle. The full design has 5 rotating joints and 1 extending segment.

This page is dedicated to discussing the feasibility of building one of these, hopefully using a Darwin.

References

• "A New Family of Six Degree Of Freedom Positional Devices" by Ralph C. Merkle: illustrates a variety of parallel manipulator systems including the Stewart platform and the Drexler arm, and has calculations that show they exhibit different tradeoffs between stiffness and range of motion.