Who says you can’t teach an old robot new tricks? Nobody, actually. That saying is about dogs. But it applies to robots too, at least judging by the way this late-90s industrial beast was put to use in a way it was never intended: as a giant CNC router.

The machine in question is an ABB IRB6400, a six-axis, floor-mounted industrial machine that had a long career welding at a Eurorail factory in Austria before [Brian Brocken] made its acquaintance. He procured the non-working machine — no word on what he paid for it — and moved the 2-ton paperweight into his shop, itself a non-trivial endeavor. After a good scrubbing, [Brian] tried to get the machine started up. An error prevented the robot controller from booting; luckily, there’s a large community of ABB users, and [Brian] learned that one of the modules in the controller needed replacement.

After fixing that — and swapping out the controller’s long-dead backup batteries, plus replacing the original 1.44 MB floppy drive with a USB drive — he was able to bring the machine back to life. Unfortunately, the limited amount of internal memory made it difficult to use for anything complicated, so [Brian] came up with an application to stream coordinates to the controller over a serial port, allowing for unlimited operation. With that in place, plus a simple spindle mounted to the robot’s wrist with a 3D printed adapter, [Brian] was able to carve foam blocks into complex shapes. The video below shows everything from delivery to first chips — well, dust at least.

This build seems to be a significant escalation from [Brian]’s previous large-format CNC machine. He must have something interesting in mind, so stay tuned for details.

For anyone looking for a capable robotic arm for automation of an industrial process, education, or just a giant helping hand for a really big soldering project, most options available can easily break the bank. [Mads Hobye] and the rest of the folks at FabLab RUC have tackled this problem, and have come up with a very capable, inexpensive, and open-source industrial arm robot that can easily be made by anyone.

The robot itself is Arduino-based and has the option to attach any end effector that might be needed for a wide range of processes. The schematics for all of the parts are available on the project site along with all of the Arduino source code. [Mads Hobye] notes that they made this robot during a three-day sprint, so it shouldn’t take very long to get your own up and running. There’s even a virtual robot that can be downloaded and used with the regular robot code, which can be used for testing or for simply getting the feel for the robot without having to build it.

This is a great project, and since it’s open source it will be great for students, small businesses, and hobbyists alike. The option to attach any end effector is also a perk, and we might suggest trying out [Yale]’s tendon-driven robotic hand. Check after the break for a video of this awesome robot in action.