Category: Projects

Various different projects in various states of construction and destruction

DrawBot – The Delivery, Part IV

It always kinda freaks me out for a moment when I am talking to someone and they reference something I’ve written in a blog post.  It takes me a little bit to process that the act of blogging isn’t really a solitary one – that I’m usually interacting with the people who read it.  While I understand intellectually that there are people who read this, part of me1 2 3 4 5 6 7  is nevertheless surprised. See, I was on a conference call tonight and someone mentioned they were happy to hear I was experimenting with a DrawBot. 8  ANYHOO!

My order from Adafruit arrived today!  This was my very first order from Adafruit Industries and I have to say all of the parts were packed very well and thoughtfully.  It’s a small thing, but I like how the Adafruit logo is printed right on the external USPS shipping label.  The box was sealed with clear packing tape and then additional paper packing tape was put down over that,9 with everything inside bundled inside bubble wrap. 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

This order contains my very first stand-alone Arduino. 21  It’s an Arduino Uno and it thoughtfully comes with four little rubber feet, several cool stickers, and a little thank you note for supporting open source.

It’s really just as well that the USPS website didn’t update until after 5pm, otherwise I would have been tempted to rush home to fawn over the parts.

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  1. The self-effacing / self-depricating part wonders … why?! [↩]
  2. Don’t you worry gentle reader, that is by far the smallest part of my psyche. [↩]
  3. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury…  Allow me to bring your attention to Exhibit A. [↩]
  4. I suppose you’d probably get more out of this post if you weren’t always poking around in the footnotes trying to see if I’ve written something clever here. [↩]
  5. In fact, I really try to keep the clever stuff out of the footnotes entirely. [↩]
  6. Boobs. [↩]
  7. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury…  is this the work of a sane man?  A stable man? [↩]
  8. Hi Brian! [↩]
  9. Nothing could escape that box.  Not even light. [↩]
  10. Pop! Pop! [↩]
  11. Apparently I’m having a very parenthetical day. [↩]
  12. I didn’t even know such a thing was possible [↩]
  13. I think it stems from my… [↩]
  14. Oh!  Shiny! [↩]
  15. extreme ADD [↩]
  16. Okay, would you like a story about my ADD? [↩]
  17. You would?! [↩]
  18. Of course you would! [↩]
  19. Ages ago I was in the boy scouts and I had, as all good boy scouts do, a copy of the boy scout’s handbook.  Everyone was instructed to write their names on the sides of the book so that they would be able to tell them apart.  I wrote my first name along the side and half of my last name.  Apparently, I got distracted halfway through writing my last name … and never finished it [↩]
  20. Thirty years later I’ve more or less moved on.  I suppose I may go back and finish writing it, but I’m clearly in no hurry. [↩]
  21. I say stand-alone since there are apparently already Arduinos in my home – in my MakerBot Cupcake powered by a Sanguino and MakerBot Thing-O-Matic rocking an Arduino Mega. [↩]

DrawBot – The Software, Part I (and an existential conversation)

This morning the USPS website told me that the remaining parts from Adafruit left Oakland yesterday.  As of this moment, they should be sitting at my local Post Office… but not go out for delivery until tomorrow as today is a postal holiday.1  In any case, I just realized that a DrawBot based on Sandy Noble’s Polargraph will require some basic knowledge of Processing.  I guess I better get learning!

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    • My current self [CS] would like to point out to my past self [PS] that if you had only placed the order one day earlier, you’d probably have had all the parts this weekend to work on.  Heck you could even have been done by now.
    • PS would counter, first, that I couldn’t have ordered all of the parts necessary without having first sought some input from people who have done this before me.  And, second…
    • CS would interrupt saying, “Hey PS, what happened to you, man?  You used to be so cool!  What you were afraid of?  Burning a chip or some damn thing?  That’s how you learn!  Buy a helmet!  In any case, people have built these things out of complete junk before!  Where is your sense of adventure?!”
    • PS would remind CS it is not polite to interrupt, “And, secondly, as I was saying, there’s no point in not making use of the various resources available to one.  It would be brash and foolhardy to simply jump in not knowing what the heck you/we were doing.  And, thirdly, in the fullness of time, I think you’ll come to understand that a few day’s delay in assembling a robot is but a blink of the eye in comparison to the time you’ll spend assembling, tuning, and operating said robot.”
    • CS, “Really?  ‘Fullness of time’?  Seriously, man, who talks like that?  I suppose the delay is not such a big deal, but the momentum one has when tackling a project is not an inconsequential concern.  I don’t know about you, but I have the attention span of a gnat.  <Oh!  Shiny!>  It is entirely possible that by the time the final parts arrive, in less than 24 hours, I may have moved on to some new project.”
    • PS, “Momentum, schmomentum.  You might move on to a new project?  Do you realize that you’ve got 16 posts on your site yammering on about this project – when all you have so far is one half-assembled circuit board?  No, you’re going to have to do better than that.  Besides, if you had simply moved to Brooklyn already like I told you, none of this would have been an issue.  You could have just walked over to Adafruit and picked up all the parts you required.”
    • CS, “Move to Brooklyn?  That’s your answer?  I live in the Bay Area, as in ‘California.’  Chances are work is going to have me driving down to Silicon Valley at some point this week anyhow.  And you want me to move to Brooklyn over $100 in parts?”
    • PS, “Well, it looks like you just admitted that this project wasn’t important enough for you to conjure up an excuse to drive to San Jose or Palo Alto.  You didn’t even try to visit a Radio Shack or a Fry’s.  Hell, the time you’ve spent griping about the delays you’ve caused yourself would have been enough for you to drive down to an electronics store and pick up the parts.”
    • CS, “Yeah, at a 50% markup?  Right.  Good plan!”
    • PS, “Okay, which is it?  Did you want the cheapest result or the fastest?  Having chosen an economical middle ground, it seems somewhat silly to blame me that the parts didn’t arrive as fast as fast can be.”
    • CS, “Shut up.”
    • PS, “No, you shut up.”

    [↩]

DrawBot – The Assembly, Part I

I assembled most of the Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino kit – v1.0 last night.  Since I don’t have an Arduino yet,1 I didn’t want to solder in the connector pins.  Other than those four connectors, it is all soldered up.

FYI, don’t try to put the L293D into the 16-pin sockets before you solder the socket into place.  I tried to do that and it was a mistake.  I bent some of the leads to the socket and stabbed myself in the finger with the L293D chip.

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  1. It’s on its way!!! [↩]

DrawBot – The Delivery, Part III

So, I’ve figured it out.  Admittedly, it took until about 4:45pm today, but I figured it out.

Today was Friday the Thirteenth.  Duh.  That DEFINITELY explains my work day.

I was very happy to find the Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino kit – v1.0 had arrived from MakerBot.  When I opened1 the package I noticed that the kit really was a kit.  Which I already knew.  I knew this was a kit, but somehow I kinda forgot about it.

In a way, it’s irrelevant that I don’t have the other parts since I have to assemble this kit.  So, tonight I’ll assemble the motor shield and tomorrow, hopefully, I can assemble the rest of the DrawBot.

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  1. Read: shredded the USPS box [↩]

DrawBot – The Delivery?

I don’t think all of my parts are going to arrive in time for me to take a crack at assembling a DrawBot this weekend.  Per the USPS:

  • MakerBot shipment:  Your item departed our OAKLAND, CA 94615 sort facility on January 13, 2012.
  • Adafruit  shipment:  Your item departed our NEW YORK, NY 10199 sort facility on January 13, 2012.

I think the best I can hope for is getting my motor shield tomorrow.  That’s okay, there’s plenty to do in the meantime.  I must learn patience.

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ProfileMaker update

I’ve made a few slight modifications to ProfileMaker.

First, after testing it seems that the apparent optimal W/T is approximately 1.67 or so.  Using this value for target W/T setting has lead to my cleanest and most sturdy prints.  Admittedly, I haven’t done proper science-testing to determine the optimal value – but I do not believe it could be far off.  Thus, I’ve removed this setting option and ProfileMaker will calculate the optimal thread width based upon a W/T value of 1.667 and whatever layer thickness you choose.

Secondly, I’ve removed the automated profile creation system.  Not many people seemed to be using this and this feature gets quickly outdated a new versions of ReplicatorG are released.  While the five critical settings provided by ProfileMaker have been unaffected by recent changes to ReplicatorG’s Skeinforge engine, lots of the other settings have been juggled around.  Skeinforge is too much of a moving target for me to try to keep up.  Ideally, you’ll find a good set of profile settings you like and will still be interested in using ProfileMaker to adjust the five critical settings.

It is my hope that by making these minor changes everyone will have an easier time using ProfileMaker and get better results.

Please let me know what you think!

DrawBot – Giant Unicorn?

As you may know, I’ve got a MakerBot Cupcake named “Bender” and a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic named “Flexo“.  There’s really no doubt in my mind I’ll be springing for a Replicator with dual extrusion. 1  Thankfully, I think there’s a way for me to make use of each of my robots, in its own special way.  I figure I can keep the Cupcake rocking a Unicorn Pen Plotter, use my Automated Build Platform in my Thing-O-Matic for mass production of smaller parts, and put a Replicator to work printing new, wacky, and/or large designs.

But, why am I talking about giant unicorns?!  Sandy Noble, the creator of the Polargraph,2 just posted about how he has created a vector graphics importer for the Polargraph software.  This is some pretty amazing stuff.  The MakerBot Unicorn has several software toolpaths that take vector graphics to GCode for printing through ReplicatorG.  The end result is that a Polargraph rocking a vector graphic importer should be able to draw arbitrary shapes, without the need to draw scribbly bits.

I think it would be particularly awesome to have a DrawBot draw a frame/border and then fill it with a scribbly/pixelated drawing.  Or, perhaps, draw the outline of an object and then fill it in with scribbly/pixelated shadings.

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  1. Will my extravagance know no bounds?! [↩]
  2. Which is probably the best documented DrawBot on the internet [↩]

DrawBot – The Hacks

Sandy Noble's modifications to Adafruit's Motor Shield
Sandy Noble's modifications to Adafruit's Motor Shield

Chatting with Sandy Noble over at the Polargraph website has been extremely helpful. 1  It looks like he’s added three changes to the Adafruit Motor Shield:

  • Heatsink added23
  • Breakout boards to connect the terminals to the clips for the motor leads.  However, it looks like there’s a small little component of a circular purple variety also on that board.
  • Extra pins for hooking up a cooling fan.  Sandy says he doesn’t use them any more, but it really wouldn’t be a bad idea given that it would take hours for even a simple print.
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  1. The photo is from Sandy Noble’s photo stream.  It says All Rights Reserved and I will happily take it down if he asks and says this is not a fair use.  Given that all of his stuff has been very open source, I’m guessing this was just a default setting. [↩]
  2. To the H-Bridges? [↩]
  3. Also…  Where does one get a heatsink?  How do you attach it? [↩]

DrawBot – The Plan!

What’s next?

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  1. Printing, for sure! [↩]
  2. I don’t fish, but I have a bunch left over from a prior project [↩]
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