Tag Archives: drawbots

Building an Arduino Drawing Robot – On The Cheap

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Dumpster score!

Dumpster score!

First, if you haven’t taken the time to add your voice to my DrawBot poll, please take a moment to do so! ((Photo courtesy of Trashcam Project))

Since there seems to be interest in learning how to build a drawing robot as cheaply as possible, I figured I’d give some help on how to do it.  As the old saying goes, “Fast, cheap and good – pick any two.”  The hands-down easiest way to build a drawing robot is to buy some parts off the shelf, slap them together, and start rocking away.  I’ll start with the cheapest possible way to get started and progress to the more off-the-shelf variety:

  • Basic Anatomy.  Just about every single vertical wall drawing robot is made from the same basic materials.  Fortunately, with a little effort these parts are pretty much interchangeable.  You need circuit boards for the brain, two stepper motors to operate either side of the line going to the pen, a pen, and lots of wire.  If you want to get fancy, you could also track down a servo motor.  The rest could be just kludged together out of nearly anything.  However, for the sake of completeness, here’s a shopping list or scavenger hunt list depending upon how you’re looking to build your robot:
    1. Some form of electronic brain, either built from scratch or Arduino powered
    2. Two identical stepper motors
    3. Lots of wire
    4. Spools
    5. Strong thread or fishing line
    6. A pen
    7. Screws, bolts, wood, and/or printed plastic parts
    8. Optional: one servo motor
  • Parts for free.
    • While the cheapest method, the time and effort investment won’t be insignificant.  You’ll need to get your hands1 dirty.  Some of the most expensive parts of a drawing robot could actually be obtained for $0 – as long as you’re willing to get your hands dirty.  As long as you’ve got a hacksaw, a drill, and some screwdrivers the world is your oyster.
    • Stepper motors.  Stepper motors (and possibly servo motors) can be found on neighborhood sidewalks, dumpsters, and in office building closets every single week.  If you don’t know where to start, try just walking into an office building and offering to dispose of their old printers, copiers, scanners, and CD/DVD players.  You’ll need to really dig into these machines to find stepper motors and when you find them, they’ll probably be the “permanent magnet” or “tin can” stepper motors.  You can tell a stepper motor from a DC motor by looking at how many leads or terminals it has.  Just two means it’s a DC motor.  Four or five means it’s almost certainly a stepper motor.  Ideally, you’ll want two identical stepper motors.
    • Wire.  In a pinch you could use telephone, ethernet cables, old speakers, old USB cables, computer keyboards or mice, or even electrical cords cut off from any kind of electrical device as a source of wire.  Basically, as long as you have a pair of wire cutters and wire strippers, you’ll never be without plenty of wire.
    • USB cable.  No matter what kind of drawing robot you build, chances are you’ll need one of these.  Most Arduinos use a USB A-to-B cable and some of the clones use a USB A-to-Micro or USB A-to-Mini cable.  If you can only find a USB cable that’s of the wrong connector type, consider hacking them by cutting one end off and splicing the wires onto the necessary connector.  Alternatively, and more destructively, you could cut and strip the wires in the cable, tear open the USB port on the Arduino/clone, and solder solder the wires from the USB cable directly to the board.  Realistically it’s just easier to find or buy a cable that fits.
    • Power supply adapter.  If your project includes a full-fledged Arduino or decent Arduino-clone, you can use a power supply providing 7-12V DC.2 If you look around your home3 you are almost certain to find a wide variety of power adapters for any number of different kinds of discarded electronics.  Just look at the power adapter itself and it will explicitly state it’s voltage output.  While you’re scrounging at an office building for copiers and printers, be sure to ask around for any old power adapters they may have.
    • Screws, washers, nuts, and bolts.  Saving these parts as you take apart the various electronics will net you more hardware than you’ll need.
    • Wood.  You can find scrap wood discarded at construction sites, in old pallets, or if you’re really hard up – inside furniture.  You’ll want to rig something to attach two motors to a wall or a piece of wood (that would, in turn be mounted to a wall).
    • Spools.  Nearly any kind of cylindrical object that has a hole in it that fits your motor shafts would work.   You could use a left over thread spool or a bobbin.  You could carve one from a cork.  You could drill a hole into a curtain or closet rod and put rubber bands around the two ends to keep the thread or filament from sliding off.
    • Pen holder.  The simplest example I’ve ever seen is from the AS220 drawing robot which featured a pen held by a binder clip, suspended by two pieces of monofilament wire.  You could use another piece of carved cork, a lump of clay or a bunch of rubber bands around the pen to hold it to the wires.  With a very lightweight pen holder, you may need to include a small weight.  I used to use a plastic baggie containing several dead AAA batteries.
  • Building from scratch.  
    • Back in 2011 Shawn Wallace wrote a great set of tutorials for Make about how to build a drawing robot.  This setup doesn’t rely upon an Arduino, but rather building up stepper motor drivers and a control board from electronic components.  Excluding the cost of wire, motors, a power supply, and shipping, the electrical components would probably cost about $15.  The reason I excluded the wire, motors, and power supply is that these things could probably be obtained for free, as described above.  Your total cost of building such a robot could as cheap as about $15 plus scavenged parts.
  • Arduino-based.
    • Building an Arduino based drawing robot is positively the easiest way to go.  Your cheapest options are to get an Arduino-clone and some form of stepper motor shield(s).
    • Arduinos and Clones
      • Cheap Arduino-clones.  A good starting point for Arduino clones is Phillip Torrone’s top 10 list of favorite Arduino clones.
        • Evil Mad Scientist Diavolino.  While this Arduino clone can be bought as a solder-it-yourself-kit for only $13.50 plus shipping, it lacks the voltage regulator and USB port present on an Arduino Uno.  This means you’ll need to be careful that your power supply choice only provides between 4.5 – 5.5V.  Additionally, you’ll need an FTDI cable to communicate with the Diavolino.  A new FTDI cable usually runs about $15-$20.  Although I’ve never bought anything directly from EMSL, I own one of their Egg-Bots, I can say I’m quite happy with the quality of their products.
        • Dorkboard Kit.  I don’t have any experience with either a “Dorkboard” or Surplusgizmos.com, but they’ve apparently this clone is selling for $6.25.  As with the Diavolino, it lacks a voltage regulator and USB port.  Unlike the Diavolino, it is not in an Arduino form-factor which means you’ll need a breadboard and mess of jumper wires or a really large mess of jumper wires.
      • Arduino.  Going with a fully featured Arduino Uno, Arduino Mega or an electrically-identical clone means you get to use a USB cable interface, an off-the-shelf motor shield, and can use a large range of possible power adapters.  Frankly, once you factor in the need for a FTDI cable, voltage regular or specialized power adapater, the need for a breadboard, and the work involved in MacGuyvering it all together, it might be easier and cheaper to just get a full featured Arduino.
    • Motor Shields
      • Arduino Motor Shield.  The official Arduino motor shield will run you about $30.  I haven’t used it, so I can’t really comment on it.  Just know that it’s not the cheapest option and read on.
      • Two Sparkfun EasyDrivers.  Dustyn Roberts’ SADBot used an Arduino with two Sparkfun EasyDrivers connected with wires and breadboards.  With her great instructable, there’s no reason you couldn’t do the same.  These drivers would run you about $15 each, plus shipping.  Again, this is not the cheapest option.
      • Adafruit Motor Shield.  I can’t recommend the Adafruit Motor Shield enough.  It’s fairly easy to solder and at $19.50 it’s clearly the cheapest shield-based option.  Adafruit’s website has detailed instructions on how to assemble and use the shield, with tons of Arduino libraries to get you started.  Besides all that, there are two different well-documented open source drawing robot projects that make use of this same exact shield.
  • Kits.
  • Software/Firmware.
    • Polargraph.  As mentioned above, you can find Sandy’s open source part designs on Thingiverse and all of his software and firmware on Google projects code repository.  What I particularly appreciate about using an Arduino with an Adafruit Motor Shield to power a drawing robot is that this setup is fairly software/firmware “agnostic.”  Using these electronics as the brains behind the operation, you could choose to draw with either Sandy’s Polargraph firmware/software or Dan’s Makeangelo firmware/software and just about any kind of steppers, wire, spools, and hardware.  So far I’ve only used Sandy’s Polargraph software, but once I finish building my brand-spanking-new PolargraphSD powered drawing robot, I think I’ll use my trust old Arduino and Adafruit Motor Shield to try out Dan’s software/firmware blend.  And, once I’ve tried that I think I’ll take a crack at writing some Arduino drawing software of my own!
    • Makelangelo.  As discussed earlier, Dan shares his open source designs for the parts on Thingiverse and all of the software and firmware on Github.
    • SADBot.  Dustyn Roberts designed and built a solar-powered drawing robot after a successful Kickstarter, featured in her book “Making Things Move,” and documented everything including her software, in an instructable.
    • Erik the Wall Plotter.  Matt Ball and Will built a drawing robot and shared their code on Github.
    • Der Kritzler by Alex Weber.  Alex’s Der Krizler is one of the first drawing robots I had ever seen on the ‘net.  He’s provided a fair bit of documentation for his setup, which uses a tiny Arduino clone and two Pololu motor drivers, and his code on Github.

Okay, that’s how you source or scavenge everything you need to build a drawing robot!

So, what would you like to know next?  Take my DrawBot poll or leave a comment!

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  1. And clothes! [↩]
  2. Technically, it could handle from 6V to 20V, but why chance it? [↩]
  3. Or snoop around a friend’s home [↩]

This project is not going to overengineer itself

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Seriously, why would anyone with hands buy this?

Seriously, why would anyone with hands buy this?

This weekend I worked on my DrawBot.  ((Photo courtesy of Relly Annett-Baker))  I stripped my current DrawBot for parts so that I may build it back together with a PolagraphSD brain/heart.  ((Bart?  Hain?))  Given that there aren’t a ton of parts involved, the process went quickly.  I disconnected the two steppers, pulled all the screws1 and all the nuts and bolts2 from the project.  Right now all that is left of my once mighty3 drawing robot is an Arduino and shield duct taped to a chunk of plywood.

To assemble the new robot into the desired configuration ((Sketch D for those of you playing along at home)) I needed to design:

  • A new PolargraphSD case
    • This new case is about 2/3 the volume of Sandy’s design and has vents along the sides and top to help with heat dissipation.  It can also be assembled without any tools or hardware – with the LCD actually keeping the entire thing together.  At this point I now have three perfectly serviceable cases.  My goal, once the entire robot is put together, is that it look and feel like a finished and polished project – a DONE project.  But, really, I’d like to have it semi-permanently installed somewhere in my house as a drawing appliance.  My prior ‘bot while cool with tons of nifty little hacker cred to it was little more than a chunk of plywood with bits hanging off.  I’d draw something with it, put the board away, then bring it out later.
    • My ideas for building out the robot have changed slightly since designing this case, so I might need to adjust the code and print another one.  The issue now is that the case is designed to be mounted by being bolted into the base of the project box.  However, if I do that a nut or bolt will have to stick through the back of the project which will prevent the paper roll from being able to travel behind the project box.  I figure I could print a new case and bolt it to the side of the project box – but that might interfere with the location of the motors/motor mounts.  I might be able to just ziptie the case to the top of the project box – which might not be good as the bot is expect to shake a little in operation and I don’t want the board shaken unnecessarily.  Frankly, at this point, I think I’ll get everything else situated completely within the project box and come back to figuring out how to mount the case.
    • Although, an idea which just occurred to me is that I could glue some plastic mounts, with captive nuts, into the inside of the project box and bolt the case into that.  Again, this would best be done once all the other issues are resolved.
  • New monofilament spools
    • I had to completely destroy my existing spools to get them off the motor shafts.  For some god-awful reason I printed the two spools at 100% infill creating the sturdiest monofilament spools in existence.  I cannot imagine what possessed me to do this.  They were heavy and impossible to remove cleanly from the motor shafts.  I didn’t get the tolerances right with the prior spools, so I had to force them onto the shafts – but then they were stuck.  I had to use a big pair of wirecutters to chop chunks of plastic off until I could pull the last bits free from the motor.  When I finish designing and printing a new set of spools, I’m going to make sure the tolerances are right before I assemble.  I want the spools to fit snugly becuase I don’t want the motor to slip when it reverses directions – as it will do frequently across a large drawing.
    • I’m still kicking around ideas on how to improve the spools.  My first spools were way too complex and the friction fit wasn’t enough to keep them together.  My second set was too tight and too short.  While I wouldn’t mind a friction fit spool, I need a spool that can’t come apart during operation4 , can be tightened on the motor shaft, and can be removed easily if necessary.  Additionally, I’d like the final spool to be taller – so that there is more of the spool center and less of the flared end of the spool for the filament to wind onto.  The flared end was flared so that the spool could be printed as a single piece.  While this was nice for simplicity’s sake, I found that sometimes the filament line would “ride up” the flared end – which introduces unnecessary error into the process.
    • Looking at the AS220 Labs website page for their drawing robot kit through Archive.org, you will notice that they use a tall spool with a low-friction monofilament line guide.  The benefit of the tall spool is that it can keep a more consistent diameter for more of the filament versus a narrow spool that will accumulate layers of filament more quickly.  The benefit of the line guide is that it forces the robot to maintain the proper distance between the two motors even when the spools are mounted horizontally.  I also happen to like the horizontal spool mount system since it means the motors won’t stick out from the wall quite so much.5
  • A new gondola
  • A way to mount a roll of paper to my project box
    • Besides tearing my drawing robot apart, this is the one thing I did manage to design, print, and put together over the weekend.  Since the paper roll I’m using did not come with a center of cardboard or wood or on any kind of spindle, it is not an immediately mountable thing.  My roll of paper is just that – a really long roll of paper.
    • What I wanted was a modular way to mount a roll of paper to the top of my project box so that it could be adjusted to fit different diameters and widths of paper rolls.  My solution was to print two “caps” to go at either end of the paper roll, with a hole through them to run a long wooden dowel.  The nifty part is where I then bolted two printed plastic tracks to the top of my project box, onto which I can slide a plastic arm which the wooden dowel fits into.  Once the two plastic arms are in place, they can be tightened down onto the plastic track.  The result is a rock solid paper roll mount that lets the paper roll freely turn.  I was so happy with the way this turned out I almost couldn’t see straight.  Yes, it is just a mount for a roll of paper – but it is the most solid and polished way one might hope to mount a core-less roll of paper on top of a wooden box.
  • A new way to mount the stepper motors to the project box
    • Given the amount of time I’ve spent just mounting a roll of paper and obsessing about spools, is it any wonder I haven’t finished thinking about how to mount the steppers?  With the first incarnation of my drawing robot I had designed and printed no less than three completely different motor mounts.
    • I would like the final version of the motor mounts to be easily adjustable, probably using a similar track/mount system that I used to mount the paper roll.  While this kind of solution takes more time to design, the result is a robot that can be quickly and easily improved and adjusted.  As suggested above in the spool section, I am leaning towards mounting the motors so that the shafts are horizontal on the plate of the wall.  This will let the motors keep a slim profile in the project box and allow the use of a tall spool which will enable more even and uniform reeling and unreeling of monofilament.
    • I’m tempted to incorporate a monofilament line guide directly into the motor mount.  In the interests of modularity, it makes sense to keep these things separate, but it might just make sense to do this given the limited space I’ve got within the depth of this shallow project box.6

I’m undecided whether I want to put a cover on the front of my project box.  On the one hand leaving the front of the project box open allows the viewer to peer into the robot and marvel at its simplicity.  On the other hand, without viewing the internals all you would see is a box mounted on the wall, a paper roll on top of that, a power cord coming out of the side, and a drawing pen moving by two almost imperceptible monofilament lines.  Perhaps I should explore this idea in another long winded post?

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  1. Four total [↩]
  2. 12 nuts and four bolts [↩]
  3. Mighty UGLY, that is! [↩]
  4. When one of the friction fit spools failed mid-drawing, it was like watching my robot puke monofilament line.  Frankly, a monofilament puking robot is pretty awesome – just not when it is made from a drawing robot [↩]
  5. If you were betting on me not being able to type an ENTIRE Page of text just on the considerations of the spools in my robot, you would have lost. [↩]
  6. For reference, the box I’m using is less than 2 inches deep. [↩]

Why do DrawBots draw on walls?

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A wall crawler - on the floor

A wall crawler – on the floor

A commenter named Ellison left a deceptively simple question on my first post in this DrawBot series.1

Ellison:  Why do it on a wall? Why not a drawing robot that draws on a large piece of paper on the ground? I think you’ll get better results from that.

I think there are a lot of good reasons reasons – some aesthetic, some technical, some practical – for having a DrawBot that draws on walls (or other vertical surfaces).

Aesthetically, I really like having a DrawBot that draws on vertical surfaces.  When placed in the room or an adjoining room, I can watch it scritch-scratching away at an enormous drawing.  In much the same way a snail’s meandering trail can be captivating, a DrawBot working out a TSP single-line-art drawing turns an apparently meaningless series of turns into a mass of scrawls that resolve into a work of art as soon as you take a step back. 2

Technically, the DrawBot is an exceedingly simple device.  You could build it out of little more than Arduino, a motorshield, two motors, string, a pen, and whatever you might have lying around.  Much of these pieces you could probably even scavenge for or salvage from other things.  In fact, only the Arduino and motorshield are things you wouldn’t be able to dumpster dive for.  The device works by moving the two motors in concert, such that by varying the length of string reeled in or out by a given motor is used to move the pen in an XY plane.  The one “ingredient” not listed in the preceding sentences is, of course, gravity.  If the point where the two strings meet at the pen did not hang essentially straight down, pulled constantly by gravity, the pen could go just about anywhere.  If you were to place a normally vertical standing DrawBot flat on the ground, the pen would no longer be pulled away from the two motors – and would just flop onto the drawing surface.  Now, you could add two more motors and more string and build a gondola that holds the pen vertically on a flat DrawBot surface while writing a lot more code…  However, I am doubtful you would get any more precision out of such a setup.  And, if you really require precision – an XY plotter might be more to your liking.  An XY plotter build would require lots of hardware (belts and metal rods or metal extrusions), more tools, and be big and heavy, and limited in the size of its drawing capabilities.  It would also be capable of really amazing speeds.  That’s a lot of extra materials, work, custom coding, and loss of drawing capacity for a dubious trade off in

As a matter of practicality, the simplicity of design and materials means this is an extremely cheap project.  An Arduino is only going to set you back about $30 and clones are as cheap as $15.  I picked up two of Adafruit’s motor shields on sale for $12 each, but they’re normally $20.  Screws and/or bolts, beaded cord or wire or fishing line, a big piece of wood or mounting things directly to a wall, 3D printed spools or just leftover spools from thread, a 3D printed gondola or a lasercut gondola or even a big red binder clip.3  Seriously, if you’ve got about $35 and some free time, you’re basically half way to building an awesome fun robot that can make arbitrarily large drawings.  If you’re willing to buy all the materials, it probably won’t cost you more than $150.

I’ll say it again – a Polargraph DrawBot is a quick, cheap, easy, entertaining, and useful robotics project – especially for beginners.  Outside of my 3D printers, this was easily the most rewarding DIY project I’ve ever attempted.  The results are astoundingly disproportionately awesome to the amount of time, energy, skill, and money used to achieve them.

Seriously, what are you waiting for?!  Go order a Polargraph kit from Sandy Noble45 or source the parts from Adafruit6 .7  Or, if you’re going to scavenge and/or source some parts, check out my Polargraph DrawBot parts/shopping lists.

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  1. Photo courtesy of The Kozy Shack [↩]
  2. And, I wonder – if you could map all snails in the world at the same time, could they be working in concert on an enormous message?  Perhaps something along the lines of “So long, and thanks for all the fish”? [↩]
  3. I just love that Polargraph video by Sandy Noble.  To see binder clip in action, skip ahead to 0:27. [↩]
  4. Whose open source work I use for my own DrawBot [↩]
  5. The next time he’s in stock, you better pull the trigger – he runs out of stock SUPER fast [↩]
  6. Where I bought most of my parts! [↩]
  7. And, why not tell them I sent you too? [↩]

DrawBot – Pen Selection

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I just tried several pens.  Here’s what I’ve found:

  • “Fine point” Sharpie, black.  This is the kind you typically use.  It makes a huge, stinky, black line that leaks all over.  Not recommended.
  • “Ultra fine point” Sharpie, black.  This also leaked right through the paper, made a super thick line, and made such a mess I stopped the drawing.  Not recommended.
  • Pilot Precise Roling Ball V7, Fine, red.  I really like this style of pen for writing.  These gel pens feed ink easily, the ball point rarely gets messed up, and it’s just all-around easy to use.  Unfortunately, as you can see from some of the drawings, it didn’t like drawing at a nearly horizontal angle.  Even though I can see through the side that the pen has sufficient ink and that it is reaching the pen tip, it just wasn’t working very well.
  • Piolot G-2 10, black.  While excellent for writing, this pen was miserable for use in a DrawBot.
  • Uni-ball Deluxe Micro, blue.  So far, this pen is AWESOME.  It seems to write amazingly well on a nearly horizontal surface, no bleeding, and it draws a very fine line of blue.  I fully intend to buy several different colors of this pen.  I believe it comes in all kinds of colors – black, blue, green, and red.  If the drawing I’m having the robot work on now turns out, you’ll get to see just how awesome this pen really is.

As an FYI, Sandy recommends:

Very smooth paper (like Bristol board) with hard-tipped fineliner pens.  In the UK he uses ZIG Millennium pens.  He suggests that Pigma MICRON pens may be a good choice for those in the states.  I’ve used Pigma Micron pens for years and really like them for pen-and-ink drawing.  They’re great on regular photocopy paper as well as serious art paper.  I would have tried a Pigma pen, but I couldn’t find any around the house.  I know I’ve got a stack of them – I just can’t find ’em.  If and when I do, I’ll update this post.

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DrawBots for the slow learner

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Today I bugged several people far more knowledgeable than I about Arduinos, drawbots, steppers, servos, and power supplies.  Here’s what I’ve learned:

Having just salvaged a bunch of parts from some old electronics this weekend, I think I’m ready to pull the trigger and start building this bad boy.  :)

Yay for learning!

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DrawBot, the Adventure Begins

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Update:  If you want to find the latest on my DrawBot adventures and build log, check out this link!

Okay!  I think I’m ready to do this!  Is anyone interested in playing along at home?  Let’s give this a whirl!  Here’s what I’m thinking:

  1. Type.  There are at least three distinct drawing styles among the various drawbots.  However, I suspect this is mostly a software issue.  Der Kritzler draws with lines or little cross marks.  The Polargraph draws large “square” pixels.  Harvey Moon’s Drawing Machine draws tight concentric circles.  I’m not sure I have a preference among the various methods and, really, I suspect any differences really lie in the software, not the specific hardware setup.  In any case, for a variety of reasons, explained below, I’m going to try to build a Polargraph based drawbot.
  2. Documentation.  I like the Polargraph for its use of off-the-shelf parts like an Arduino and Adafruit motorshield and for its documentation.  The Make Magazine drawing machine also has a lot of documentation – but it is a very from-scratch design and there are some important images that are broken in the tutorials.  Der Kritzler also has decent documentation, but it appears to be more technical than I’m comfortable with at the moment.  One other huge benefit to the Polargraph is that Sandy Noble is still publishing updates for it – as recently as yesterday.
  3. Parts.  Der Kritzler uses expensive toothed belts, the Polargraph uses (plastic) beaded cord with weights, and Harvey Moon’s drawing machine uses something with weights – probably beaded cord.  The most interesting variation for me is monofilament spool method used by the Make Magazine system.  It has a weight on the “gondola” / printhead itself and winds/unwinds filament off the spool.  The benefit for me with this system is that it won’t have unnecessary hanging and swinging weights associated with each of the two cords.  When one has kids and cats it is best to minimize attractive nuisances.
  4. Sourcing.  Adafruit is out of their motor shields, so it looks like the MakerShed is going to be my best bet for picking up Polargraph-style parts.  An added bonus is that the MakerShed is located in Sebastopol, which is only a two-hour drive from my place in the SF Bay Area.  While I’m not about to drive four hours to save $15-$20 in shipping, it does mean the parts will get here quickly.
    1. Arduino: $30 @ the MakerShed
    2. Adafruit Motor Shield: $20 @ the MakerShed
    3. Stepper motors (one for each side): $10-$38/each.  However, which should I buy?!
    4. Servo motor (for pen lifts):  $15-$20.  However, which should I buy?!
    5. Power supply:  There are lots!  Which should I buy?!  Will I need a second to power the steppers?
    6. Since I’m planning to build a working Polargraph style robot using a monofilament spool rather than beaded cord, I’m going to forgo the beaded cord for the moment.  If I need the beaded cord, I can just print the gear/sprockets later. 1

Anyhow, your input on which steppers, servos, and power supplies is greatly appreciated.

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  1. Don’t you just love having your own 3D printing robot?! [↩]

DrawBot Resources and Links

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I’ve moved the latest updated version of this post to my website dedicated to “v-plotter” drawing robots.  Check it out!

***

As I’m gathering the parts and the courage to build my own Drawbot, I’m keeping track of the various resources I’m using.  Since I’ll be documenting my success1 here, it would be nice to have the online resources I’m using organized in one place.  To this end, and in furtherance of this goal, and without further ado, I bring you an ever growing list of resources.2

Verbosely yours,

MakerBlock

Update:

  • 2013/04/01:  Link to Vertical Plotter on Arduino.cc, DrawBug by Tinkerdays, Whiteboard plotter, and Giant Printer
  • 2013/02/14:  Link to Erik the WallPlotter.
  • 2013/01/25:  Link to Gontarcyyk.org
  • 2012/08/27:  Link to Stuart Childs’ DRBO Polargraph
  • 2012/08/15:  Link to Michael Cooks’ Polargraph build at Foobarsoft.com
  • 2012/06/27: Link to Drawing Machine (Thanks LineKernel!)
  • 2012/04/19:  Link to Facebook Wall Robot
  • 2012/04/16:  Link to Norwegian Creations’ Drawing Machine
  • 2012/04/10:  Link to SmoothOctopus and Dan Royer’s Drawbot! (Thanks Dan!)
  • 2012/03/26:  Link to GarabatoBOT
  • 2012/03/18:  Link to Dealywhopper’s Mr. Scratchy
  • 2012/02/16:  Added links to John Cliff’s “Ugly Cousin” DrawBot
  • 2012/02/12: Added link to Viktor
  • 2012/01/30: Added Lanthan’s printable Krizlerbot Polargraph gondola
  • 2012/01/27:  Added more info about James Provost’s InternBot and several other DrawBots
  • 2012/01/19:  Updated to include link to Matthew Venn’s energy monitoring Polargraph
  • 2012/01/09:  Updated to include link to Matt Met’s Whiteboard drawbot!  Thanks for the link Matt!

Links:

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  1. Or, alternatively, EPIC failures [↩]
  2. Some of which were borrowed from Sandy Noble‘s site [↩]
  3. Instructions for Adafruit motor shield assembly [↩]
  4. Includes parts list! [↩]
  5. The Make Magazine contest ended 3/3/2011 [↩]
  6. 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. [↩]

Wanna make a DrawBot?

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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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