Difference between revisions of "Disassembling a Roomba 560"

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Image:Roomba_6.JPG | Four captive screws hold in place the bottom cover. Removing it exposes the battery and exposes some additional electromechanical systems (enclosed in blue plastic cases).
 
Image:Roomba_6.JPG | Four captive screws hold in place the bottom cover. Removing it exposes the battery and exposes some additional electromechanical systems (enclosed in blue plastic cases).
Image:Roomba_7.JPG | To remove the battery, simply pull it out using the lateral cloth handles. The contacts on the battery are flat and, as we will see later on, touch small elastic plates directly fitted to the main circuit board. These plates pass through a cutout in the upper shell of the robot, and here are seen exposed.
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Image:Roomba_7.JPG | To remove the battery, simply pull it out using the lateral green (cloth) handles. The contacts on the battery are flat and, as we will see later on, touch small elastic plates directly fitted to the main circuit board. These plates pass through a cutout in the upper shell of the robot, and here are seen exposed.
 
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Image:Roomba_8.JPG | This is the robot with the brush housing removed. The gold-coloured, circular metal element at the bottom of the housing is most probably the "dirt detector" sensor that the robot uses to find out floor spots requiring particular attention.
 
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== The brush housing ==
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This element is more complex than it is immediately apparent.
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Image:Roomba_9 | By separating the elements of the brush housing, its contents become visible. The housing also hosts the two motors used for brush rotation and to lift all the housing when needed (e.g., the robot is on a thick carpet) and the gear reduction for the former.
 
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Revision as of 15:00, 10 March 2010

This page is dedicated to the disassembly of a Roomba 560 vacuuming robot. Its purpose is to provide AIRLab users (or anyone else) wanting to hack a Roomba with a guide to the process, so that they can plan their work easily. Other Roomba 500-series models should be similar to the one featured in this page.

Please note that the robot we have taken apart was well-used, so you will see a fair bit of dust and dirt on the parts... all for the sake of realism. (Just joking: simply, that was a broken robot we could spare in case the process proved to be fatal :-) )

If you click on any of the images below, you will be taken to its own AIRWiki page, where you will be able to download the file. However, the files are NOT high-resolution (480x320 pixels: on this page they are shown at full resolution). You can download the high-resolution originals of the images (and some additional image not shown by this AIRWiki page) from here. Note that the originals are 3888x2592 pixels, and each of them weighs in at 3-5MB.

Before dissection

Here you can see the Roomba 560 before any disassembling occurred.

Removing the bottom cover

To get to the electromechanical elements of the robot, you have to remove the bottom cover (as we will see later, electronics is accessed from the top instead).

The brush housing

This element is more complex than it is immediately apparent.