This paper presents the design and development of a laboratory facility constituting a constrained planar flexible manipulator system. The system is designed for experimental investigations within research programmes involving flexible manipulator systems. An outline of a generic design procedure for flexible manipulator systems is given. The design criteria developed through this procedure account for the strength and stiffness of the manipulator and the required transducers and instrumentation. These are considered in detail and the system designed accordingly. Finally, practical problems encountered are highlighted and methods of dealing with such problems are presented and discussed.