This is incredibly professionally done, and even with cheaper components. While the idea may not be new, the craftsmanship in every step is amazing and very inspiring.
A very through and informative vid. Really happy that I finally understood the mathematics behind dithering in less than 40 seconds. You made something complex seem obvious with the use of well chosen words and a great diagram. Thank you !
My community just got a cool makerspace and I felt right at home there even though I haven't touched a 3D printer beforehand thanks to your extremely inspiring, informational videos. While I haven't made something this cool yet, and I will, I'd like to thank you for another video that makes me really think about the kinds of things I have at my disposal!
+Daniel Hickman Hi Daniel! Thank you for your kind words. I am very happy that my videos helped you! If you would be so kind, please share your first project with me when you complete it. I'd love to see it! Happy make-ing!
Great and detailed video. This channel may be small now but I expect that as time goes on and more people discover it, it will grow exponentially. These videos have incredible production quality
Nice lesson. Your explanation style is wonderful. Very concise with no missing details. Everything nicely in perfect order with visual descriptors containing just enough information. I can't believe how many things I completely understood from those 13mins. I bet your great at revision control😁
Very clean and straightforward tutorial video. Excellent job on the presentation of complex information. I am also impressed with the creative way you use cheap materials and get away with it. I am surprised the string holds up and the pvc is straight and rigid enough. I go w a y back and this is stand-out work.
You should take a picture of the machine while it's drawing something, and then feed the picture into the machine, so it draws itself while it's drawing
Something very similar could be made with a robot drawing on an etch a sketch. I made one recently. You presented a different way of doing what I did for the pathfinding algorithm though, I might use some of those ideas in my project if you don’t mind. Thanks for the interesting video and project (I’m a little jealous about your 3d printer and part designing skills, I only have a lego mindstorm...)
I have seen countless and built around 10's of 3d printer, cnc and drawing machine, i really like how its approached from ground up. Really original. We would like to see timelapse of drawing machine. You might want to consider installing grbl and use normal cam software for gcode. Also the pen holder looks prime for a servo
Karan Chaphekar Thanks! Those are all very cool ideas and I agree about the servo -- the additional pen "z-axis" to lift it up and down would definitely not require a full stepper motor. Definitely a good potential add-on though to expand the capabilities of the machine.
You should consider using GNU octave in place of matlab if you are going to show "DIY" kind of stuff. That way, the average person can access the front end of the process in this case.
Simply add an up /down pen device and you have a 3 axis machine(plotter) now you feed your picture into ink scape convert to paths and convert to g code and run GRBL and print the picture...you use 1 arduino uno ,3 stepper motor drivers....load GRBL into the arduino uno and away you go...NO mat lab needed and if anything goes wrong theres help on the net.. I have a old 24 inch wide hp I converted years ago and it runs perfect..... nouse reinventing the wheel but I do like your build idea
By the way, did you notice, 0-128 are 129 different values, 129-255 are 127 different values, so to make them equal, take 0-127 and 128-255, both 128 different values. However, there is no color in the middle ;)) Since the number is even.
Cool build! Another way you go could have built it would be to make a 1-axis gantry draw on a moving sheet of paper that unrolls from one spool onto another.
You didn’t have to make it a single line printer at all. You could’ve used a small servo and a clicky pen. That should’ve served just fine as pen up and down.
Awesome work and video. I like the fast paced yet detailed explaining you do. Definitely subscribing your channel. How long did it take to do this project?
+Klaus Petersen Thanks! In total, I would guess ~60 hours including printing, but doing things like software development simultaneously. However since this was done during my free time, the work was spread out over several weeks.
I have been hoping for something like this to happen. I am an artist and I have always wanted to see machines printing pictures in real watercolour paints. There are giclee printers that do this. They use airbrush nozzles. If you are ever looking for free open source art programs, check out MyPaint and Krita.
This isn't a robot, it a plotter, they been around since the 50s. They are primarily used in CAD, blueprint, architecture, mechanical design and other industries.
A plotter is a robot. THey had being around for long but it wasn't that long that you could make one yourself without knowing a lot of electronics and computer programming.
You are GOD! Amazing project! So inspiring! Subscribed a liked! Good luck in the future! Would love to see more of those amazing projects in the future!
Does anyone knows..... How this transformation of 3-AXIS cnc grbl cnc into 2 axis plus 1 servo axis cnc plotter, are made or works because grbl is made to controll stepper motor of x y and Z axis but in plotter z axises works with servo's up - down decreat moment not with z stepper axis with linear moment and motions in 3d?
+Jeremy S Cook Thank you so much! In the future I would also like to play with different path planning algorithms to create pictures with more cool micro patterns. Also thank you for your awesome blog post about the drawing machine! It can be checked out here: blog.hackster.io/draw-recognizable-images-using-only-x-and-y-movements-1ff9dc5140c8
Great video BUT can you PLEASE explain how you use the string to move the carriage? I can see how it would pull the carriage when the string is wrapped around the pulley, but how about when it has to go the other way? You cannot push with a string..this part really confuses me.
Both carriages work on the same principle -- essentially the strings are double wrapped around each of their pulleys, which allows each carriage to "pull itself along" in both directions, because each of the strings are fixed/anchored to the drawing machine's frame. Hope this helps!
Thanks for your response. I was looking for an inexpensive way to introduce this topic to elementary and middle school students. I'll try building the machine myself and see how it works. Keep up the good work. You are a creative guy.
Michael Wright Thank you so much! That sounds like a fun class! Good luck with your build. If you are willing/able to share pictures of the final machine, I would love to see the results!
Hi Alex. I'm making project on painting robot that paints picture of the person that is seating next to robot. The robot has to make picture in RGB format. I'd gone through your videos the algorithms are used same that you've used in this robot but what I want is how to interface camera and make sure that image remains in RGB format after algorithm applies to the picture. Would you please assist me on that? Or just get me an initial idea from where I start. And I also want to confirm from you that instead of pen can I use nozzle in my project? I hope you get me some solution on this.😅🙂. Otherwise great work from you and I'm so glad that i refer your project to make my project.
+Jérémy Morlier Thanks! My background is in mechanical engineering and robotics, but my hope is that with 3D printing and Arduino, many people can build cool things!
I was plotting a similar pen toolhead. Z-Axis can work for big stops, but a solenoid on the toolhead would be best for dot matrix prints. Any way you could do this?
Definitely - the Arduino in this project has open spare inputs that could be used to control a solenoid. You would need to modify the circuit a bit with a transistor to handle the power needed to drive a solenoid and also modify the tool head a bit, but it is definitely possible. If you end up giving this a try, please let me know how it turns out!
Hello, my name is John, and I am 7 years old. I love your video! I would like an instruction book for a Lego castle. Lego does not make anymore Lego castle boxes, and even I find one, it is like $400. So I want to see a drawing of Lego castle so I can make it using pieces I already have. I like your videos a lot and watch them all the time. Thank you and goodbye - John
Hello John! Thank you so much for commenting and watching -- I am happy to hear that you like my videos! Because the drawing machine only draws in one color and because I do not know exactly which Lego pieces you already have, I do not know if I am the best resource for instructions on a Lego castle. However, Lego has made a free software called "Lego Digital Designer" available, which will allow you to experiment with the blocks that you have (plus more!) for free on your computer to come up with cool new designs! The software can be downloaded here: www.lego.com/en-us/ldd#full-section-2 Hopefully this is useful to you and thank you again so much for watching! Keep on making and creating and best of luck with your Lego build -- I would love to see what designs you come up with!
