Delta Robot

A 3D-printed parallel delta robot — orobot's first entry in this class. Three servo-driven arms suspend a moving end-effector platform beneath a fixed base, giving fast, precise pick-and-place motion in a small, lightweight footprint. Designed and built by isaac879, who also designed the Pan-Tilt Camera Tracker already in this catalog.

What it is

Unlike a jointed arm, a delta robot keeps its motors fixed to the base and drives the end effector through three parallel linkages — the geometry that makes industrial delta robots so fast at repetitive pick-and-place work (sorting, packaging, light assembly). This build brings that same parallel-kinematics layout to a desktop, 3D-printed, servo-actuated scale.

Specs

• Actuators: 3x HJ S3315D digital servos (arms) + 1x SG90 micro servo (gripper/end-effector rotation)
• Controller: Arduino Nano
• Comms: HC-05 Bluetooth module (serial link to a host PC — a Windows serial controller app is included in the source repo) at 57600 baud
• Power: 3S 11.1V LiPo through a buck converter to 6V for the servo rail
• Frame: 3D-printed PLA arms/base/effector + 333mm aluminium tubing legs (16mm OD / 14mm ID)
• Control: Cartesian jog (X/Y/Z) and absolute-position moves over a custom serial protocol; a stored move-sequence array supports simple programmed routines

Build

The mechanical design, wiring schematic, and 20 STL parts are hosted on the author's Thingiverse page. The Arduino Nano firmware (delta_robot.ino / deltaRobot.cpp) implements the inverse kinematics and serial command set; it depends on the author's companion Iibrary utility library. A Windows desktop controller (main.cpp, MSVC/windows.h) is included for jogging the arm and building move sequences over the Bluetooth serial link.

Hardware & license notes

• Firmware/code license: MIT (isaac879, 2019) — the GitHub repository's LICENSE file.
• CAD/STL license: the 20 STL files are hosted separately on Thingiverse under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) — a stricter, non-commercial license than the code. Anyone printing this design must follow that license's attribution and non-commercial terms; this is flagged for human review before this program is published.
• Controller: the project uses an Arduino Nano, which orobot's hardware registry does not yet have a dedicated entry for — this program is tagged with the closest existing BYOD entry (Arduino Uno) as a placeholder pending a proper Arduino Nano hardware type.
• This is a learning interface: the code in this Program is a simplified command-relay stub, not the real inverse-kinematics firmware. Full functionality requires flashing delta_robot.ino (plus the Iibrary dependency) to a real Arduino Nano wired per the schematic below.

Source

• Firmware/code: https://github.com/isaac879/Delta-Robot (MIT)
• STL files (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0): https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3465651
• Project video: https://youtu.be/vONuJPu1z3s