JBV's 17-Foot-Wide Robot Handles Desktop Clutter So Its Creator Doesn't Have To
"It turns out that my desire to avoid cleaning far outweighs my sense of self-preservation," its creator admits.
Maker JBV, of the Engineezy YouTube channel, has grown tired of having a messy workshop — but rather than clean up, decided to build a robot to do it for him.
"I built a 17-foot wall-mounted robotic crane to clean my workbench for me — complete with a three-axis gantry, custom 3D-printed parts, a servo-powered gripper, and full voice-controlled routines," JBV explains of the project. "This robot [had] to be big enough to span the full 17-foot width of the workbench while being able to execute precision moves, while also being versatile enough to deal with many different types of tools."
Anyone who has completed more than a couple of projects will be familiar with how tools, components, and miscellany build up — and if you don't keep on top of things, it's easy to find your workspace buried. A mammoth clean-up session is one solution, but why bother when you can make even more mess attempting to engineer your way out of the problem?
"It turns out that my desire to avoid cleaning far outweighs my sense of self-preservation," JBV admits.
The project was inspired by the three-axis operation of a 3D printer, also used to provide some parts for the build, but scaled up and including an X axis stretching a full 17 feet along JBV's desk. A gripper is able to pick bins from wall-mounted storage drawers and various tools then place them on the desk before putting them back again — a success, but a limited one owing to the current incarnation's lack of smarts.
"At the moment," JBV says, "these tools have been placed in pre-programmed slots. But the master plan is to improve on the entire system. It needs to be faster, and it needs to be truly automatic."
The project is documented in full in the video embedded above and on the Engineezy YouTube channel.