PlotClock by Joo

Thingiverse citizen Joo has just shared the hands down, cutest robotic drawing dry erase clock you’ve ever seen ever, called the “PlotClock.”  This is the kind of awesome robot that makes me want to drop everything I’m doing to build one.  Much like the Piccolo video, I could watch this little clock write/erase the time all day.  The design is inspired and elegant, using one servo to rock the other two backwards for a pen lift, and using a small “cup” with an fuzzy bottom to transform the pen into an eraser.

Joo has kindly shared lots of photos and instructions on this FabLab wiki and the code on Github.

So…. Does anyone in the SF Bay Area have a laser cutter they could let me use?  🙂

Hat tip and monocle nod to Tbuser for pointing project out to me.

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.

Pen Lift Achievement Unlocked!

Drawing vectors with the PlotterBot

Drawing vectors with the PlotterBot

I recently developed a simple printable pen holder for my PlotterBot.  Although it worked wonderfully as a pen holder for single-line drawings and although I had designed it to work with a servo for pen lifts, I had literally never tried actually using it with pen lifts until yesterday.

Above is my first attempt to draw vectors with pen lifts and, frankly, it came out beautifully.  The design of the pen lift system could not be any simpler.  The pen holder has a mount for the micro servo which holds it as close as possible to the wall-facing surface of the pen holder and a rectangular hole for allowing the servo’s arm to sweep through.  I was concerned that the sweeping action of the servo arm would cause a slight stray mark on the paper.

Despite my concerns, the pen lift test was successful.  It really came down to a matter of balance.  Once I had swapped in a different pen lift arm and connected the pen lift servo cable, I was able to easily adjust the balance by changing the location of the filament attachment.  With the proper balance achieved, the pen lift essentially worked flawlessly.

Today I tried my longest drawing ever, an 8-hour process, with voluminous pen lifts.  The result was… amazing.

Stay tuned for a picture.