How the Other Guys can get a DARwIn-OP, Part Two!

This is a second in a series of posts on how the average person (like me) can get access to this very cool robot platform. The key point to know before you continue reading this post is that the DARwIn-OP will be open hardware. That means upon other things that the CAD files for all of the parts of the robot will be online for anyone to download! You can make your own version! I see two huge costs saving because of this.

The first is in the cost of making all of the metal brackets for the robot. Time for more of my infamous quessestimation*.  Let’s see if we can figure out how much the metal brackets add to the cost of the kit. If you look at my previous post the total non-servo cost for the Bioloid Premium Kit is 390.80. The same cost for the Bioloid GP kit is 1091.80. Wow, that is a difference of 701.00! If you look at the two kits you will see that most of that increased cost is in the metal brackets. The two kits are almost the same otherwise.   I think it is safe to say that the cost of the metal brackets for the DARwIn-OP add at least 1000.00 USD to the total cost of the DARwIn-OP.

The second is the labor cost savings of building the robot yourself. This well be harder to quessestimation* I would think that it would take a skilled worker two to three days to build and test a DARwIn-OP. This is based on the fact that a Bioloid Premium Humanoid will take about a full day to build and to test. The DARwin-OP is a lot more complicated robot then the Bioloid Humanoid Type A. This maybe a bad guess but I am thinking about 500.00 USD for the total labor cost to build the DARwIn-OP?

Conclusion: I am thinking that if you make your DARwIn-OP brackets and build the robot yourself you will save around 1500.00 USD. That may not seem like a lot. It is only about  12% of the cost of the robot but  you are saving some money and lowering the cost of the DARwIn-OP. As I said above this is a second in a series of post on how the Other Guys can get their own DARwIn-OP! I would be interested in feedback and your ideas on this.

Link to my first post on how the Other Guys can get their own DARwIn-OP. 

* My term for pulling figures out of your butt! (quesstimate)