Easy Hydraulic Robotics!

There is a lot of small electronic robotics that use servos and stepper motors, but there are very little good, small hydraulic robotics happening. This arm using simple syringes in an effective way that is capable of lifting a fair amount of weight for its size.

The materials required are:

syringes
Plywood
Aluminum bar (this can be replaced with acrylic or wood if wanted)
riviets
bolts
screws
acrylic
piping
balloon

Only basic tools are needed,

hacksaw
bandsaw (not needed, a hand saw could be used)
screw drivers
vice
hammer
drill
drill bits

What gives this arm its large lifting capacity is having two syringes on each control and having counter balances. Counter balances make a slight negative force on the arm when it is unloaded, this means the syringes arm lifting the arm at all only the load. also having two syringes on all the lifting points, increases the weight the arm can lift as the force is spit between two syringes.

Using leavers and placing the syringes in the right place allowed the full movement of the syringed as well as giving maximum moment, the arm can pick up anything on a A3 sized piece of paper and further in some places, as well as been able to fold up into the footprint of the base.

Most robots have a claw type gripper at the end of the arm, i desired to try something a bit different, on the internet i found a cleaver claw design that was made out of a balloon full of coffee so i thought i would try it out. i work by lowering the balloon full of coffee around the object that needs picking up then evacuating the air out if the balloon, this causes the coffee granules to go solid around the object locking in place.Here is were i got the idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d4f8fEysf8

The green acrylic you see on the side of the arm is a self leveling system, commonly used on tractors and diggers to keep the bucket level, in this case it is used to keep the gripper level and works very effectively. I originally had a syringe on the bottom of the auto-leveling so the gripper could be tilted but i removed it to simplify the design.