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Comment by rmast | Hacker News Reader

If you read the epilogue, they weren't able to achieve the under $1000 price goal. Total cost ended up being around $1,450. Pretty good price reduction compared to CARA 1.0 though.

Hypothetically if I were to want a quadrupedal robot to experiment with it's not an impulse buy/build, but getting closer to that point... whereas $3000+ is a hard pass (e.g. Apple Vision Pro territory).

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It's $1450 if you discount the construction time, as ever. Which ordinarily wouldn't be worth commenting on, but in this case it means rewinding 12 motors which just sounds like an exercise in tedium and hand pain.

Only because they didn't know how to ask the vendor to do it for them.

I guarantee this vendor would be delighted to make them to spec at a 1ku volume, max. Rewinding isn't even a meaningful SKU distinction or line retool, it's a configuration parameter.

At 12 motors per product, it's easy to hit MOQ.

Reminder that this was a student project.

There are inventor programs that'll literally ship you to Shenzhen to build connections to manufacturing sites and even provide you with a liaison, etc. I only know this because I was once in a program that did exactly this.

Mind linking some?

HAX Ventures (Formerly HAXLR8R) https://hax.co/

TroubleMaker (Conquer! program) https://troublemakershenzhen.com/member/apprentice-membershi...

Seeed Maker Camp https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2024/01/15/introducing-make...

I was an alumni of HAXLR8R before the rename.

Rewinding drone motors for high torque and lower speed seems to be a popular thing. Here's the commercial process of machine winding motors like that.[1] That's a medium-volume machine, loaded and unloaded by hand, and adjustable for different wire and motor geometry. Here's a hobbyist version of a similar winder.[2] And another automatic hobbyist winder. Those wind under uniform tension, and with wire positioning, so you get a smooth, tight winding. This matters if you're going to use the motor much. Doesn't matter as much for short-lived toys.

There should soon be enough convergence that low cost, high torque, low speed models are off the shelf items. It's a great time to be building robots. Used to be all uphill on the parts side.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMk2qFFcSho

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=486nUU2FjGU

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-tAsM0K7Sg

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