We imag­ine most vis­i­tors to this blog will already know that amaz­ing things can be achieved or designed using open­source tools like FreeCAD. The Thor open­source robot­ic arm is a great exam­ple of a com­plex open­source project built using a total­ly open­source tool chain.

It’s a pri­mar­i­ly 3D print­ed 6 degrees of free­dom robot­ic arm which looks, and per­forms much like it’s indus­tri­al coun­ter­parts. Once print­ed and assem­bled the 625mm tall arm is able to han­dle around 750 grams which means it’s pret­ty capa­ble and could well be tasked with use­ful work.

Of course, we fea­ture it here as it’s been mod­elled in FreeCAD, if noth­ing else it’s worth down­load­ing the FreeCAD files as an exam­ple of of excel­lent qual­i­ty com­put­er aid­ed design and it’s fun to look around the parts and assem­bly. Aside from FreeCAD the Thor project has lever­aged KiCad for the PCB com­po­nents and the open­source G‑code inter­preter and motor dri­ving plat­form GRBL. Once assem­bled there is an open­source piece of soft­ware “Asgard” which acts as a con­troller inter­face for the arm. In oth­er words, it’s open­source all the way!

If you plan to make a Thor, there is around 200 hours of 3D print­ing and then a stack of assem­bly work. All the com­po­nents, step­per motors, dri­ver boards are all off the shelf items so although a com­plex design, it’s total­ly doable. So far there have been in excess of 30 Thor arms built and a vari­ety of them are shown on the project web­site. Whilst it might look a lit­tle com­plex for a begin­ners project for those new to hard­ware builds, it is very well doc­u­ment­ed. There is a bur­geon­ing forum where you can check out oth­er peo­ples builds and ask questions.