Grabber Arm (using Tinkercad)

Hi everyone! In this Instructable using Tinkercad, you will learn how to build and customize your Grabber Arm. It comes in handy when you need to reach something too high or too far away that you can't normally get. The Grabber Arm is great for social distancing because you can grab something from someone else while keeping your distance.

For this project, our goal is to learn the basics of Tinkercad and how to customize your arm. I will show you how to build a basic Grabber Arm in the following steps. Then comes the fun part! You will customize the handles, grabbers, shape, size and color to make it yours!

In this instructable, I will refer to parts with a rotating ball as the black parts and parts with a socket as the blue parts.

For this entire project, we are going to use the Tinkercad align tool, mirror tool, group tool and copy and paste. Remember to click on the white box and type in the dimension of the shape instead of dragging it for the size. You can move a shape with the arrow keys or you can drag it.

In this step, we are going to build the middle parts.

Here are the completed parts.

In this step, we are going to build the hand parts.

Here are the completed parts.

In this step, we are going to build the grab parts.

Here are the completed parts.

Now is the time to make it yours! There are many things you can customize to give your Grabber Arm that unique look. You can experiment with the:

• handles
• grabber tips
• length of the middle parts
• number of moving parts (which changes the reach length)
• decorations on the flat side
• color

If you 3D print your grabber arm and you find it is hard to move, you can experiment with the size of the rotating ball. To do this you have to export the part and them reimport the part to change the size.

These are some of the final projects from my students.