Not a huge amount of progress on my drawbot but I’ve stumbled across a couple interesting ideas I want to capture as part of this build stream.
I have printed a gondola and a couple spools. I printed this gondola and it looks good.
It holds a sharpie marker great, tight with just the right amount of tip poking out. It has good mount points for the cords and a place to put some weights on the bottom. The problem is, and I didn’t think about it before printing it, there isn’t a way to mount a pen lifter servo. I could probably rig something up that would work fine, but I’d rather have a designed in solution. So I’ll likely be printing a new gondola soon. This gondola will probably work fine for a TSP single line art but I want a pen lifter so I can do pointillist style images.
I also printed out some spools, the ones I mentioned in my earlier post, the ones makerblock recommended I shouldn’t use. They printed fine and I think I can glue them together to avoid the coming apart and unspooling problem. But they aren’t ideal, for a lot of the reasons makerblock pointed out. They press fit onto the motor shaft, no set screw, they are kinda narrow so you get cord build up changing the spool diameter. They looked good on paper but after printing and holding them in my hand I can see some of the issues makerblock pointed out. So I’ll be printing new spools.
On to the interesting part. I found a link on youtube to a guy who made a drawbot using the Eggbot hardware. So far I haven’t found any more details but at least someone tried, and succeeded, at this before.
Second, and I think more cool. I stumbled across a video for building a drawbot on the cheap. This guy uses some super cheap stepper motors, less than $5 USD each with motor drivers, simple 3D printed spools, and cup hooks for cord guides. No motor mounts, he just screws through the motor mounting tab into the wood drawing surface. Doing a quick BOM using the cheap motors and drivers, a super simple bare bones arduino clone, 3D printed spools, cup hooks or eyelets for guides, a cheap wall wart power supply, and a hand made or 3D printed gondola I think you could make a drawbot for less than $50 UDS, maybe less than $35 with some searching.
To me this is a super exciting way to introduce robotics to newbies. The drawbot itself is cool, people just seem to like watching the drawing appear physically. The cost is pretty cheap, it seems within the range of a learning or science project, and it’s super simple to build. I think a high school or middle schooler could easily assemble a simple drawbot in a day. Build up some kits and sponsor a build a drawbot day at your local school.
Drawing board, melamine coated shelf board from HD
Stepper motors with drivers
A cheap arduino clone, preferably already assembled to avoid soldering
Cables and wiring harness, preferably already assembled for plug and play
3D printed spools and gondola
Cup hooks and screws
Some fishing line
A sharpie marker
The software would need to be developed to drive it but that problem is being worked. I think this is a cool idea that could be pretty interesting for young wanna-be nerdlings.
Search DealExtreme for stepper motors, I’ve found some motors with drivers for less than $4 USD each.