Nine Drawing Robots On the Loose!

It’s incredibly exciting to me to see people printing my designs and posting pictures.  It’s even more exciting to see more drawing robots appear in the world.  Since I released my first designs for this robot on 11/18/2013 at least eight people besides me now have really tiny drawing robots of their very own.  Since the design is moving fast and many of the parts aren’t compatible with other versions, I’ve particularly appreciated the feedback of those people who have made their own since their observations, suggestions, and comments have helped me improve the design in many different ways.

Here are six copies of version 0.18, the XY plotter on Thingiverse (plus one I sent to Stephen Laporte):

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Dan Sinker even uploaded a video of his little robot at work.

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If you’ve made one, please email me and click “Made One” over on Thingiverse.

Tiny CNC Software Update

Stephen's version 0.18 robot drawing away!

Stephen’s version 0.18 robot drawing away!

I want to start this post with a shout out to Stephen Laporte.  I met Stephen at the Bay Area 2013 Maker Faire when he came over from the Wikipedia booth to see if I could draw a giant Wikipedia logo for their booth with my large PlotterBot.  Stephen was also the winning bidder for the version 0.18 parts I listed for sale on eBay a few weeks ago.  I shipped out the parts as soon as the auction ended and he got them the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Now, here’s the cool part…  While I’ve been busy hammering away at the design aspects of this tiny robot, Stephen put together some software to get it drawing something more than grids!  He has graciously shared his Arduino and Python code on Github for everyone to use.  With just a few lines of code, you could easily add in support for the brand-spanking-new third axis.