Help with AL5A Assembly Guide and SSC-32 Calibration

Lynxmotion Robot Arms
1

Hi Folks,

I thought I got through the assembly steps shown here:

lynxmotion.com/images/html/build140.htm

and followed the calibration steps in the RIOS 1.06 help.pdf file.

But, when it comes to using the RIOS Moves/Motions section in move by X, Y, Z mode or move by distance, Y and base angle mode, it doesn’t respond as expected. However, when I use it in Move by joints mode it responds as expected.

So, I figure I’ve done something wrong in the calibration process.

I went back to step 23 & 24 of the AL5A assembly guide and started LynxTerm and set all servos to 1500. That looks correct.

I went on to do SSC-32 calibration according to the RIOS help.pdf file, up to step 8. That looks good. The assembly guide instructs the user to come back to the assembly guide and follow its instructions instead of performing step 8 in the help.pdf file. This appears to be because the shoulder mechanism isn’t capable of moving to the full 90° position as it once was.

I noticed that when I follow the assembly guide’s step 8 replacement instructions, the process ends with the shoulder servo toward the rear of the robot at 45°. However, the help.pdf file is written and progress from step 8 appears to depend on the shoulder servo ending up fully at the rear of the robot at 90°. That is to say, if the shoulder is left at 45° and the remaining calibration steps in the help.pdf file are followed, the robot does not appear as shown in figure 8 of the help.pdf file.

Seems like there should be a more up-to-date document for putting this thing together and aligning it.

Thanks!

G

2

Hi G,

The reason you need to follow the alternate instructions for step 8, is that the Help.pdf instructions included with RIOS are made for the larger arms such as the AL5D which have a full 180 degree range, whereas the AL5A arm has smaller brackets and can only move backwards by 45 degrees instead of the full 90.

We noticed a step that is missing from the assembly instructions is that you need to set the proper arm size in RIOS so that the inverse kinematics calculations used the correct arm dimensions and allow the X-Y-Z calculations to work properly. To do this, click on the “Arm” button on the main screen, click on the “Arm” button in the “Arm size” section in the top-left of the new screen, and then select the AL5A image on the new popup screen. To exit, click OK, then Save, and finaly Exit to return to the main screen.

Once this change is made, the X-Y-Z mode should work much better. Can you confirm that this is the case?

Thanks,

3

Thanks! Will check that shortly.