Igus Rebel Teardown

Take a look under the hood of the Igus Rebel joint used for the Rebel 6 axis robotic arm!

[@mattadc]

Is it a harmonic drive or a cycloidal? One of the gear elements looks flexible, which seems like it would be harmonic, but it looks like the outer housing and the flex gear only mesh at one point, not a two like a harmonic would.

[@espresso-shot]

How does the Rebel compare to the AR4 in terms of performance/speed/accuracy/ease-of-use?

[@robotjs]

Apologies for just seeing this. So let me get back to you on spec comparison. In terms of usage the most difficult part was writing my own control software ( so I could use open source variant ). If I wanted to shell out another 2k I could have got the non OS version and used igus control software. With respect to using the AR4 vs Igus, the AR4 sounds a bit cooler but lacks the strength of the Igus. Also the issues I had with AR4 was that each joint has a unique design, the issue with this approach is if you may have unique mechanical or electrical issues with each joint and the solutions to those issues does not transfer to other joins ( as they are all different ). In the case of the Rebel, all joints are basically the same ( there are 2 small ones and 4 large ones ) but the design is the same. Also, what I love about the Igus is there was no wiring involved and all the joints have absolute encoders with brushless DC motors. Less wiring means less things can go wrong in the physical world :) however the tradeoff is dealing with CAN protocol.

[@daanyl]

Just came across your channel, loving the projects! I want to build an arm too and use you’re beautiful web UI😁 i do like the igus robot. Are you planning to reverse engineer it? 🤓 would be great to have an arm like that for around 2,5K with ali express parts and cnc milled aluminium parts 🤔 i m now building a low budget high spec big cnc i designed in solieorks. Would be awsome to make some budget robots with it 😁 keep the projects going, loving it!

[@robotjs]

Reverse engineering is too much work and would require more mechanical and electrical engineering skills ( skills that I have less of ). This is why im relying on Igus at the moment. Honestly when all other competitors are charging 30k + for similar robots the 5-6k price tag on the igus will be worth it ( once they improve a few things ).

[@ucronotopia1988]

Cool!