Still under construction

My original drawing robot was built using an Arduino Uno, Adafruit motor shield, and two beefy stepper motors bolted onto a big chunk of plywood.1 Now I’m in the process of building a new robot using a sweet wooden project box, a freeduino, a PolagraphSD shield, and the steppers from the original drawing robot.  The other day it occurred to me that if I only had another set of steppers, I would have everything I need for a second drawbot.

About a week and a half ago I placed an order with SparkFun for some awesome rainbow colored ribbon cable, wire connectors, and some other stuff.  Since I was buying some stuff anyhow, I figured $14 wasn’t much to pay to have another set of motors I could use to rebuild my old drawing robot.2 I also see several additional side benefits to having this extra set of motors.  First, and most obvious, I’ll have two drawing  robots.345 Second,67 I’ll have another set of motors I can put into some other wacky project down the road.  Third, I’ll be able to test a totally different software setup on the second drawing robot without having to disassemble the other robot.  Ideally I’d tinker a little with the source for Dan Royer’s Makelangelo’s software and Sandy Nobel’s Polargraph software.

Don’t forget to take a minute and fill out my DrawBot poll so I’ll know what to blog about next!

1. Photo courtesy of Alex Abian (Also on flickr.com/alexabian [↩]
2. Albeit with smaller motors [↩]
3. What’s better than one drawing robot?  10 drawing robots! [↩]
4. Give it a second [↩]
5. Second.  Heh. [↩]
6. Again with the second [↩]
7. You’d think we’d be to thirds by now [↩]