Category: Projects

Various different projects in various states of construction and destruction

Wanna make a DrawBot?

So, I wanna make a drawbot.  While there are any number of draw-bots and art-bots out there, the kind I would really like to make is the kind that suspends a pen or a pen in a carriage on a wall by two wires or cords that are reeled in and out in order to allow the pen to draw across a large sheet of paper hung on a wall.  The Der Kritzler, in the video below, is an example of the most recently updated of such projects:

Another great reason to point out the Der Kritzler is that it links to so many other similar resources.  The other links below are for similar well documented projects.

The last one is just a graffiti/painter robot that paints on far off walls by shooting a paintball gun at the surface.  It’s really quite awesome.  Since several of these people have already actually built drawbots, I’m thinking there must be a reason for not using simpler/cheaper methods for construction.

When I conceive of such a device, I think that the kind I would want would not even need a pen lift, since it would draw in a TSP / traveling salesman problem single-line-art format.  The basic common setup is to have two stepper motor, one controlling each string or, as in the case of the Der Kritzler, two toothed belts.  However, why wouldn’t someone just use a reel of fishing line, nylon cord, or whatever that is reeled in and out on a spool that is directly connected to the stepper?

Anyhow, it would seem that the project would require an Arduino, two stepper controllers, two stepper motors, a servo motor if pen lifts are required, string, and a bunch of parts that could be printed such as pulleys, gears, carriages, mounts, etc.  Now the only thing I have to overcome is my total and complete ignorance when it comes to connecting an Arduino to anything and then, you know, programming it.  :)

Sooo…  Is this a project that interests you?  Or is this a project that holds no interest for you, but the idea of helping with a project interests you?  Where should I begin?  (I’m guessing buying an Arduino…)

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Yarr!!! I’m BACK, baby!

The blog?  BACK.

ProfileMaker?  Also BACK by overwhelming popular demand!

New host?  CHECK!!!

As far as I can tell, there are three major drawbacks.  First, the amount of work involved in changing hosts.  That’s a serious freaking pain.  MySQL DB’s, files, and e-mails, oh my.  Second, this theme isn’t working as well as it once did – so the blue lego in the top left corner is gone.  (For now).  Third, there’s still a little weirdness on the admin side of this blog – but don’t you worry, I’ll keep you from ever noticing!

ProfileMaker – Crippled, but back…

At least for the time being.  :)

I’m guessing that only about 10% of ProfileMaker users were using the complete profile feature.  For those of you who didn’t use it, this feature would use your inputs to create an entire Skeinforge profile, zip the whole thing, and e-mail it to you. 1  However, this 10% use case was probably accounting for a huge portion of the server load.

I’ve disabled the e-mail-a-profile feature to see if this will help.  Let’s cross our fingers and hope!  As a friend of mine always says, these are good problems to have.

  1. Pretty convenient, really. [↩]

Alas, poor ProfileMaker, I knew you well…

I launched ProfileMaker on March 20, 2011.  After serving up more than 3500 awesome Skeinforge profiles, my website hosting company has actually started to complain that I’m using too much of the shared hosting environment’s resources.  As a result, I’m going to have to disable temporarily and potentially discontinue ProfileMaker.

I suspect it is the Skeinforge profile creation feature that has caused the most trouble.  Every time this feature it used, it creates a temporary file and incorporates it into a full Skeinforge profile, which is then ZIP’ed for e-mail delivery.  It’s possible that disabling this one feature may dramatically reduce my site’s server load.

Two weeks later

On April 14 I posted that ProfileMaker had served up 209 profiles to 58 people.  As of right now there’s 598 profiles and 144 people served.  That’s a lot of repeat business! 1  The number of people increased by 100%, the number of uses went up by 200%, and the amount of my awesome went up by 37%. 2

I figure this means either:

  • People really like it and are using it a lot
  • People really hate it and they are clicking the same button over and over again cursing my name

I hope it is the first one.

  1. And, by business I mean people clicking a button on a free web service [↩]
  2. I’m rounding here [↩]

ProfileMaker: More than 209 profiles and 58 people served!

More than 58 people have generated profiles with ProfileMaker1 !

Seriously, you need to stop printing calibration cubes and fiddling with Skeinforge.  Find out more than 58 people have discovered and start using ProfileMaker to create your Skeinforge profiles.  You can either manually enter the values provided by ProfileMaker into Skeinforge or have it e-mail you a ready-to-slice Skeinforge profile.

Always wanted to try printing at 0.25mm per layer or with 1.75mm filament or in PLA?  Your ‘bot can do it.

  1. Powered by SCIENCE! [↩]

ProfileMaker v3.0

It’s online and ready for testing.  I would appreciate the help of any beta testers.  Here’s what you need to play:

  • A Thing-O-Matic with a MK6 Stepstruder
  • Ideally you have filament in 1.75mm and 3mm diameters and in both ABS and PLA
  • A fair amount of patience, a willingness to print off some test objects with a variety of profiles, and the ability to summarize your findings for me

To entice you, here’s what v3.0 can do right now:

  • Provide good settings for your Thing-O-Matic MK6 Stepstruder for ABS or PLA in 1.75mm or 3mm diameters running a Heated Build Platform or Automated Build Platform
  • Allow you to specify the gear diameter, gear swell, and feed rate
  • Allow you to generate a full profile based on any stock Thing-O-Matic profile – along with the solidity/fill ratio
  • E-mail you the finished profile as a zip file

I’m still struggling with the math required for a DC motor extruder.  However, as soon as I get that sorted out, I look forward to updating this web app to provide Cupcake and Thing-O-Matic MK5 DC motor calculations and profiles as well.

So!  Do you have what it takes?

I should really take that poll down now…

I ran a poll recently asking for input on the following:

  • Work for PLA as well as ABS (5 votes)
  • Work for DC motors as well as Stepper motors (2 votes)
  • Work for 1.75mm filament as well (2 votes)
  • E-mail myself the results
  • Ability to change the feedrate (2 votes)
  • Ability to manually change the filament diameter (1 vote)
  • Ability to manually change the gear diameter
  • Ability to obtain multiple settings
  • Ability to include a “fudge” factor
  • Ability to manually change the gear swell
  • Nothing! I love it as is!
  • Meh.

I’m in the process of testing my ProfileMaker v3.0 – and it’s got ALL of the above features except the DC motor stuff. 1  If you’re interested in testing it out, let me know by sending an e-mail or leaving a comment.

  1. And, the “Meh.” too. [↩]
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