Armdroid 1000
In early 2022 I found two old Armdroid 1000’s plus some of their accessories in the back of my engineering teacher’s storage closet. Neither of them worked. So I decided I would do some research and reverse engineering and get them to work. This site collects all the notes I made and documents I found during that effort.
No more updates
I have since graduated and no longer attend the school where I originally found the Armdroid. Consequently, there will be no more updates to this site.
What is the Armdroid?
The Armdroid 1000 is a small blue robot arm produced by D&M Computing in the early 1990s. (They were based out of somewhere in the United States - I’m not sure where.) The Armdroid 1000 was based off another almost identical (and bright orange) robot arm called the Armdroid 1 produced in the mid-1980s by the now-defunct Colne Robotics (themselves based out of Twickenham, England). D&M was bought out by LabVolt and the 1000 was painted white and re-branded as the LabVolt 5100. The 5100 has since been superseded by other robots and is no longer in production as far as I know.
Quick Facts
- Weight: 10.5 pounds (4.75 kg)
- Height: 24 inches (maximum)
- Arm length: 17 inches
- Degrees of Freedom: 6
- Input Power: 13.8 volts, 5 amps (~65 watts)
- Speed: 6 in/sec (max. theoretical) / 2 in/sec (practical)
- Motors: 6x Mineba 23LM-C226 stepper motors
- Interface: 8-bit TTL port
- Processor: None (external controller required)
- Linkages: Parallellogram w/ toothed timing belts