DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VII

Yesterday I accomplished a little more with my DrawBot.  Here’s what I did:

1. Drilled holes in my project box¹ for running mounting wires through the box.
2. Drilled holes in my project box for the power cord and USB cable.
3. I added several yards of monofilament line to each spool.  The way I have the motors mounted into the box I had to add some filament line to it on the spool.  Obviously, I had no way of knowing how much line I would need, so I just added a few feet.  Today I cut off several additional yards, tied the new section to the shorter section already attached to the spool² , cut off the little loose ends, and rolled the spool with a finger.
4. Found studs in the wall, put two huge screws into two studs³ for holding the box on the wall.
5. Ran some sturdy steel wire through the box for mounting on the wall.
6. Cut a huge sheet of cardboard out of a box we had in the garage.  I wrapped three edges of it in packing tape, so that it would remain flat and not shed little bits of cardboard paper.  The fourth edge I covered with duct tape for a sturdier hold.  This was then mounted on the wall underneath the pine box using more huge screws going through the side with the duct tape.  The purpose of this is to give the DrawBot a flat surface to draw on, rather than the textured wall.
7. I then plugged the power cable and USB cables in and tried to fire up the Polargraph software.  Since this is all being done in a different room, I’m connecting all of this to a totally different laptop using different software.  I have an older laptop running Windows Vista that is connected to my Thing-O-Matic and Cupcake.  Now it is attached to my DrawBot as well.
8. At this point the only physical components of the DrawBot missing are the gondola which I haven’t installed and blank paper.
9. Unfortunately, that laptop I connected the DrawBot to is having some kind of problem communicating with the Arduino.  But, that’s another problem for another day.

1. A long pine box [↩]
2. Square knot [↩]
3. True story:  My wife heard the new electronic stud finder going all wacky from the family room.  She called back, “If it’s making that beeping noise, you’re doing something wrong.”  I replied, “Yeah, I’m just running it over my belly just to see what it will do.”  My daughter ran over in disbelief and then called back to my wife, “Mom!  Daddy’s rubbing the finder on his tummy!”  Say what you will, that damn thing is accurate. [↩]