Various different projects in various states of construction and destruction
Here’s a list of things I’m thinking about vacuum forming:
This is the second post in a short series about vacuum formers. You can start with the first post about how to make your own inexpensive and easy to use vacuum former or skip to the bottom of this post with a list of all of the posts in this series.
That’s it!
Bucket Vacuum FormerFirst, a huge thank you to Airship Noir and their Maker Faire Kansas City 2016 project, “Make Your Own Vacuum Formed Steampunk Goggles.” They were kind enough to post pictures and instructions about how they made an incredibly cheap, but effective, vacuum former.
Inspired by their project, I wanted to pay-it-forward and help others build their own vacuum former. Here’s how I built mine:
Put it All Together
I’ll do another post soon about how to actually use the device. If you’ve read the Airship Noir post, you know the basic steps are to place things on the bottom of the bucket, heat a plastic plate with a toaster oven, and lower the heated plate over the things you want to mold while the vacuum is one.
Bucket Vacuum Former
Lately I’ve been working on drawing robots more and more. My latest creation is an itty bitty Tiny CNC drawing robot. I’ve already published the files and Arduino sketch on Thingiverse, but you’ll find all of the instructions over on my PlotterBot blog. While this site is about 3D printing and random nonsense, I’ve tried to only post stuff directly related to drawing robots over on this new website.
If drawing robots are your cup of tea, then please take a minute and check out my other side. :)
I’ve been working on and blogging about my PlotterBot, through several incarnations, for a little over a year now.1 The posts on this site have always tended to be a mixture of near-incoherent ramblings, frivolity, and the occasional nuggets of information. However, since showing off my PlotterBot at the Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 it really feels like that project deserves a website of its own.
While I’ll still discuss my PlotterBot and related experiments here, my goal is to make PlotterBot.com a resource for people who are interested in building an awesome drawing robot of their very own. If you’ve enjoyed reading about my DrawBot adventures here, I hope you’ll sign up for my Plotterbot.com newsletter and stay tuned for some tutorials on how to build and get the most from your own drawing robot.
Default Series TitleDid you miss my booth at Maker Faire this year? No problem! Sign up for my PlotterBot newsletter and I’ll send you the entire PDF all of my booth materials and the binder I had on display.
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It is now officially official!1 My daughter and I are going to be presenting our projects at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013!
How awesome is that!!!
Okay, before you read any further, take a moment to click here and vote for my PlotterBot for the Road to Maker Faire Challenge.
I’ve been blogging about every little aspect of my own drawing robot – with this post1 it’s more than 80 posts on the topic. ((Photo courtesy of Vox Efx)) Everything from a list of other robots, to where I sourced the parts, to my failed attempts at designing parts, and a lot more posts about what I’ve done that does work. Using what I’ve learned from my own really colossal failures and the brilliant open source work of others like Sandy Noble and Dan Royer, I’ve designed all of my own printable plastic parts from scratch, explained my thoughts and considerations behind the designs in excruciating detail, and shared all the files and my source code for everyone to use.
The winner of Maker Faire’s contest “The Road to Maker Faire Challenge” gets $2,500.00. Dear gentle reader, should I be fortunate enough to win – I hereby make you these two promises:
So, please vote for my PlotterBot for the Road to Maker Faire Challenge!
Until very recently, I had only considered a drawing robot’s pen holder maintaining the pen at an angle to the drawing surface as an obvious and positive thing.1 I have now been cured of such illusions and understand that when the pen is mounted at something other than perfectly perpendicular to the drawing surface, it is possible for the pen tip skip or stutter across the drawing surface.
I’ve already droned on at length about the various ideal attributes I considered while designing a pen holder. In light of this new important attribute of pen tilt other than perpendicular causing pen skipping, would I modify my design?
It probably depends.
First let’s consider what causes the skipping itself. It seems to occur when the pen holder moves faster than the pen tip “wants” to be dragged across the drawing surface. The result is that the pen tip tilts slightly with an upward movement instead of drawing upward for a short distance, then the pen holder swings a little to compensate for the upward jerk, then the pen tip skips upward – leaving a gap the pen tip skipped over. (I feel like I”m not explaining this well…)
Once I read that post by Dan, I did some half-scientific tests.2 I dragged the pen holder around on the drawing surface. This is not even close to an operational simulation because I’m sure I didn’t keep the pen steady and the pen holder would almost never move that quickly. I found that when the pen was moved very quickly upwards, the entire pen holder would indeed skip. I tried the same “experiment” again after having adjusted the pen so that it was perpendicular to the drawing surface. This time the pen still skipped – just a little less than when it was at a 15 degree tilt in the pen holder. However, the pen I was using was a big marker.
Setting aside the pen tilt for a moment, I can’t think of any other benefits besides skip-reduction behind putting the pen perpendicular to the drawing surface. The next thing to consider is whether all pens skip equally. Not having actually performed a specific test to determine this, and speaking only from experiences in using different pens, I would suggest that not all pens skip equally. Specifically, good ball point gel based pens do not appear to skip when operated very quickly. In fact, running a gel based ball point pen seems to work quite well since it seemed to keep the itty-bitty ball inside the pen tip moving, which keeps the ink flowing.
I would suggest that the desirable pen holder tilt would depend upon (a) pen holder speed and (b) type of pen possibly as follows:
| Marker, perpendicular | Ball Point Pen, perpendicular | Marker, tilted | Ball Point Pen, tilted | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Pen Holder | I would hypothesize a fast moving marker is going to skip whether it is mounted perpendicularly or not.However, from a semi-scientific test, I a tilted marker would skip a little more. It is important to note that a marker will draw equally well whether it is perpendicular or tilted. | First, gel ball point pen will quickly stop being able to draw ink if it is not held at a tilt. A non-gel ink ball point pen might not have this problem since at least some of the ink comes through via capillary action.Either way, drawing perpendicularly is a problem for ball point pens. However, since their tip makes a small point of contact with the drawing surface, they don’t seem to suffer from skipping problems, even at high speed. | I don’t think a marker held at an angle is going to draw lines any better or worse than one that is held perpendicularly.However, my limited testing suggests that markers drawing at an angle quickly will skip a little more than quick drawing markers held perpendicularly. | I suspect a ball point pen of almost any kind would work well if drawing at an angle. Almost every single drawing made with my first drawing robot was done with ball point pens operating at about a 30-45 degree angle.Admittedly, that robot never drew very quickly, but then again I never seemed to have problems with skipping. |
| Slow Pen Holder | If a pen holder with a marker is moving too slowly, the result will be ink bleeding all over the drawing and through the paper and pens that dry or run out too quickly. It’s really quite a mess.I suspect that running any marker too fast is going to cause skipping problems – whether it is at an angle or not. A marker’s tip either starts out much wider than a ball point pen, or it will end up that way after hours of drawing and being dragged across a large sheet of paper. In my experience, using a marker in this fashion will basically make the marker unsuitable for any other purpose. | With the caveat that pretty much any kind of ball point pen is going to have a difficult time drawing perpendicular to a vertical drawing surface, I would posit that moving the pen slow-to-medium would result in gaps in the drawings. However, I think those gaps in the drawing would likely be more due to the ball point pen not have sufficient friction to keep ink flowing consistently. | A slow moving marker makes about as much of a mess as an oil spill.Even assuming a medium-speed marker, I don’t think skipping would be that big a problem as long as the pen was not tilted at too severe an angle. | A ball point pen could probably be operated anywhere between slow and fast.As long as the pen is moving relatively continuously, a ball point pen should be able to provide a continuous stream of ink. |
Taking into account the potential for skipping, I would suggest based on the analysis above, that skipping is a problem for markers no matter the angle and largely irrelevant for ball point pens. I would also suggest that a very slight pen holder tilt of 15 degrees is extremely helpful, if not crucial, to ball point pens and mostly irrelevant to markers.
Hey Dan, what do you think?
Last but not least, this is post #80 in this DrawBot Adventure Series! And there’s still so much to cover!
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Mr. Noble is not the only one prone to hubris.1 After taking into account every post on ideal drawing robot pen holder criteria, I found one more post that I should have read first. Dan Royer of MarginallyClever.com suggests2 as good pen holder should:
My own prior post on ideal characteristics in a pen holder took into account Dan’s number 1, 3, 4 and considered 5. What I failed to consider was how friction can cause the pen to skip or stutter when the pen is mounted at an angle and the pen travels upwards.
Although I started diving into this consideration, but I’m putting all that over-pontification into its own post. This post is really about (a) Dan considered a very important factor in pen holder construction which I neglected and (b) how awesome open source is. My own pen holder would be a terribly complicated mess doomed to multiple revisions had I not had the benefit of being able to review a veritable legion of pen holders used by many many other people in their many many different kinds of vertical drawing robots.
So – Yay Dan! Huzzah open source!
The next post will be about whether this consideration would cause me to change my existing pen holder design.
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