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.

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 The 5100 has since been superseded by other robots and is no longer in production as far as I know.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