Mechanical Arm Holder System

This is an adjustable system for a mounted articulating arm. The base has two connection types for 2020 aluminum track or regular C-Clamp style to attached to any surface. The arm linkages are one component that endlessly link into each other so you can combine to make them as long as you need for the arm. The system uses 2" ¼ 20 bolts for the elbow joints and there are automatic pauses in the adjustment knobs for you to embed hardware inside them. 

The top plate is swappable, currently I have two things for this system, a lamp and a phone holder mount. The phone holder mount has a ¼ 20 thread to mount camera equipment to which I use for a phone holder stand. The lamp uses a puck light and a mechanical iris. The idea with this system is to try and create a generic universal system that can have different components added to so they can fit any need. 

I have added an exploded axon diagram for the mechanical iris light to see its assembly. You will need to print the blades out twice to get all the parts you need since it doesn't fit on one plate. I hope to add more to this system going forward but hopefully its straight forward enough that you can make your own components for the arms if you wanted to.

I will copy and past the instructions from the stand alone mechanical iris fidget toy here to reference. The geometry is the same for the light it just has more components behind it:

Step 1: You will need 8 blades in total, the plate can be reprinted again and there are extra pins just in case but 2 are not needed. Assemble the pins onto the blades, they should be facing down and the lip should be flush with the rest of the fin on the top. I would suggest gluing these down to the blade so they always stay in place. Do this for all 8 blades.

Step 2: Drop the blade and the pin that you just glued into the hole on the bottom, you can start with 1 like in the diagram and then move clockwise. The next blade that you put down in 2 should be laying on top of the blade you just put in. This will be the case for every blade and they continue to sit on top of the previous one as you work your way around. Once you start to hit the holes for 6,7, and 8, the starting pieces will be covering them up, lift them up gently and continue to add the final blades. When they are all in you should see that there are 8 pins sticking up and that each piece is layered onto its neighbor. 

Step 3: With the 8 pins that are sticking up from the last step, the next part can get put on. The pins should all align with the channel on this layer. You can slightly jiggle it to get everything into place but they should all align and that will tell you that it was assembled correctly. The “tab” of this part should be set to the left most it can be while aligning with that pin, by turning this layer to the right with all of the pins in the channel, you should see the iris close as its rotated. These parts should slide easily so if there is a large amount of resistance, something is misplaced.

Step 4: Place the final top cap on and screw in the three mounting holes to the bottom plate around the perimeter.