Part of me finds it REALLY funny that you managed to reinvent the daisy wheel printer. Another part of me is totally impressed that you came up with what's essentially a conversion kit for turning a typewriter into a printer. I'm not sure which part of me is winning out.
putting that Y slider at an angle is such an obvious but genius move 😅 I was trying to think of a good way to accomplish dealing with that height difference in the rows of keys before you got to it and basically facepalmed when you showed the angled rack setup lol super cool project, as usual 👌👌
I know right! I'm in my 3rd year and his videos makes thinking of the possibilities so exciting. I appreciate that he shows and explains a bit of the process more than just "I got this thing and did that thing and boom here it is". My creativity could use some work though!
What I find genius which some people might not have noticed is the hot glue pockets you modeled into your parts. When using any type of glue a “starved joint” is a very real thing where the glue gets squished out between the 2 materials causing a weakness in the joint. You accounted for this but adding a glue pocket. Very nice.
I just came across this video (and channel)... It hasn't yet, but definitely should! I got here on a convoluted journey via a 3D Printer Academy website link to a Kickstarter of models which was run by JBV while had a RU-vid link.. which brought me here.
You are too young to have seen it, but down in the late 1970s / early 1980s before printers became available for home use, you could buy a "keyboard" consisting of solenoids which you mounted above your electro-mechanical typewriter and your computer would then drive the solenoids. It made a hell of a noise, but it worked remarkably well. Later, the dot-matrix printers became more widely available, but their print quality was definitely way less than the solenoid-driven electro-mechanical typewriter. Someone actually recreated this kind of contraption: www.geeky-gadgets.com/retro-typewriter-printer-created-using-arduino-and-solenoids-30-06-2015/
What i love about these projects: As a software developer i see just from a quick glance room for some improvements on the software :) Easy peasy for me. On the other side i would really struggle with the 3d design. So i like these projects which bridge different topics :)
You should now pair this with AI story creation software. Then make it portable, take it to a coffee shop, and when people look at you funny, tell them you are working on your next novel.
Lol, this would make an awesome art exhibit...dress the mechanism up with a sparking and stressed out looking robot to look like it's typing - then just have it typing away random gibberish generated by an AI bot that was trained by watching months of trash TV Call it "A device by any other MAC address would have as low of latency" by William Sparkspeare
@@SomeGuyOnTheInterweb cool! I once had the dream of using my channel to provide great Buckeye State weather content. That came and went a long time ago. Haha. Still in Ohio. Still enjoy weather.
Amazing work!!! I've been following your channel on and off and you are getting more and more ambitious. Really exciting to see you push your creativity!
I love this! I'd like to see you tackle a string art machine. There's a few examples on RU-vid but they're basically a hoop with a lot of pins around the edge and a mechanism that feeds thread through them. The designs that can be made are very artistic and cool.
You know, it never occurred to me until now that the boomer style of peck typing might have a reason… it actually makes sense on a typewriter where the keys have long heavy strokes and you have to punch the keys down with force… the “proper” and efficient way of modern typing wouldn’t work on a typewriter without a lot of effort and skill… so most people probably just pecked at the keys to make sure they got a clean result! Not to mention if you make a mistake you can’t just easily delete… so accuracy was more important than speed for most people. It just goes to show that as much as we might judge others, they might have an explanation or reason behind it. My mom types like that but she grew up using a typewriter which she actually still has in decent condition in our storage.. maybe I’ll check it out and see how it feels.
3D printing is amazing! Absolutely fell in love with it. The principal of fast Prototyping really puts building something in a new perspective. I once heard "creativity is intelligentice having fun". This really is true with 3D printing
Very cool project I which at the end of the video you made normal speed segment of the machine taping a word or more, then a timelapse without moving the camera to see it motion for longer time, just for people to apreciate the creation, well done
Thank you for being the first to expose me to and let me know about the career path for me that I've been looking for in this video (mechatronics engineer). Also EXACTLY 400th comment! This can't be a coincidence 😉😜 ;P
Hey Jay! Haven't seen you in ages, but my dad told me about your creations. This stuff is awesome! Not only the finished products, but I love these videos of your process!! I just bought your wall mounted marble coaster to print for my son. Keep this up! I've subscribed and will keep watching. Also, "baby Boomer-esque typing style" is one of the funniest phrases I've heard in a long time!
James! Saw that but wasn’t sure if it was you- thanks so much for supporting. Haha we all have at least one peck-typer in the family and their name is often Michael 🤣
Had to pause the video at 04:00 ... I sat and stared off into space cause in my 30+ years of using computers NEVER heard that(or remember hearing it). And it makes so much sense.
You asked for ideas for future projects: You could adapt this to operate a comptometer, this could be an interesting project as there would be all the fun of coding the mathematical procedures used with a comptometer and also whilst it is possible to do this one key at a time on a comptometer they are designed to press several keys at the same time, you could have one arm with several moving fingers. It would also have the advantage of being able to claim the title of the slowest electronic calculator on the planet ;-) BTW - professional comptometer operators only used keys 1 to 5.
Great work! Same thing was in my mind three years ago but only for trying not for image printing and my preference was fixing solenoid actuator on each key. My idea was to create fusion of soft keyboard and hard print i.e. As we go on hitting/typing keys on computer keyboard it will relocate same remotely on typewriter ;)
Also, 3D printing has been a concept for as long as history and the idea got very popular in the 80s. Articles in all the science rags were taking of them as a futuristic future thing. To build buildings and tools and prototypes. But it wasn’t until some people bit the bullet and just built one that they became popular. Nobody saw their obvious utility. Nobody saw dollar signs. It wasn’t our engineering capabilities or even or computer power that held us back, it was people willing to just do it finally that made the difference. Makes you wonder how many other amazing things we lack because people expect someone else to come up with it.
Correction on the return/enter key on Mac keyboards: Full-sized keyboards, both Mac and PC, have both an enter key and a return key. However, very few programs handle them differently, especially on the Windows side. But there's still a tiny difference in MacOS dialog boxes, so the numpad-less mac keyboards have the both on the same key with one on the Fn layer. Some PC laptops also have this, but I've never seen it labelled (not that I have ever looked for it). And in case someone wonders what the difference between enter and return originally was: Mainframe computers used to work by sending a full page of text to the terminal, where the user then could put in all the data they wanted and send the whole thing back to the computer to be processed. The return key did just what it does here when writing a RU-vid comment, it moves the curser to the next line. The enter key did what happens when I press the "Comment" button below, it sent the filled out form to the computer.
Bigger mind blow for ya: "Return" was the original keystroke command for all computers in the early days. It was commonly used on terminals, telewriters, home PCs (of which Apple is a member). "Enter" came along later on.
I know a kid who need this who loves to play the guitar and is sadly stuff with depression and anxiety. He is very close to me and sadly recently talked about wanting to be suicidal. He wants a typewriter to which him and his dad can use to write a secret project out... Hint: the project is based around a large spoon. And he is shy but very easy to talk to. I hear he is your biggest fan as well. :) (Text from speech btw)
Hey JBV, I love your videos! The output of this project is beautiful, I do a lot of 3D modeling and printing in my projects minus the servo and arduino additions (wish I could learn it). I really appreciate the commitment you’ve had holding on to your vision. Congratulations. Big fan of your channel - keep it up ✨
fantastic! there's an output filter for mplayer that renders video in ascii, you might be able to type up a short video, grabbing each frame, then animating them together. just an idea :-) subscribed!
This is a darn fine combo of real things, made things and the magic glue that holds stuff together.... All you need now is a webcam to take a photo of someone, convert that to ascii art, and then "print it out" Noowwwww you're cooking on gas :D
This is awesome! Love the ridiculous engineering choices (hot glue 😅) for the lulz, and even the stubborn commitment to using servo motors even if something else would work better. That being said, another approach to building this kind of machine would be to just use an unmodified 3d printer control board and stepper motors with endstops. You just tell the firmware (probably Marlin) how many steps translate to the movement of one millimeter on each axis, and then you could write a simple program to translate a text document into GCode movement commands to move the X and Y axes. The Z axis could be used for operating the "return" lever. And either continue using a servo for the button-press (Marlin firmware can control servos as well) or better yet, a solenoid connected via an H-Bridge to one of the spare GPIO pins on the control board (There are GCode commands that can tell Marlin to set a GPIO pin to high or low). With that in place, you could hook it up with OctoPrint and then you're literally using an entire 3d printing stack to implement a traditional text-on-paper printer! 😅
I have seen so called professionals who also used delay function for mutual excrusion or simply to control paralell processes in the industry, even if a real servo drive knows exactly where it is. :-D Anyway this is a very nice fun project with hot glue and many-many hours of thinking. I wish I could do my projects also.
Just found your channel and have been going through some of the past videos. In the future when you want to get rid of play in your gears you might want to try a herringbone gear pattern. I use them a lot when I want lager gears for an easy 3d print but do not want the play.
Fricken heck man this is an excellent build 🤙 I'm sure it's been said before, but for future servo projects it's very easy to modify them for endless rotation for linear and winching applications. Few resistors or even using a linear potentiometer in place of the potentiometer and removing the stop pin in the output spline. Always looking forward to more mechatronics builds.
@@Engineezy i know you’re a busy guy, but i i figured i’d ask anyway. i struggle with putting my ideas and ambitions into motion, sometimes. what do you use/do to organize your thoughts or goals? i struggle to focus on one project for extended periods of time and end up jumping from project to project, leaving stuff unfinished. trying to improve!
Yessir! It’s a good tip, actually considered it for the return arm for a minute but the only problem is you lose positional control and would still need some sort of feedback loop! It will likely come up in a future project.
you should have arranged an array of solenoids on the bottom that pull in when powered. That way the mechanics are hidden and the art can be rendered quickly like its actually being typed
Hi Jay, you are awesome creative developing and sharing your ideas👏 👏 👏 a blowing mind adventure! I arrived here by the lovely flowers projects :) This typewriter robot art project is fantastic, and only 9k views, is under rated... It deserves to grow, I think... For example, with an App you could be receiving orders (for artistic or romantic typewriter letter) online from all over the world, for a fee, or traveling from museums to museums integrated with some theme expositions. You "just" need to improve you device to feed the selected paper type (sponsored) and deliver the outcome:) what do you think? Glad to meet you and your work 👌 WD
@@Engineezy thanks a lot for your comment! I agree that it might be worth a revisit... For example I can imagine your creative projects on some Cience Expositions, helping visitors to travel in time, connecting important iconic tech devices from the past, and empowering them, with the present technology. This could be part of a screenplay of a time travel short movie - and your video "How I Built A Robotic Typewriter that Creates Art" is the so loved "behind the scenes". Coud this fulfill your creative tech mindset and boost your channel views? What do you think? I feel so proud of your intense creative tech projects, and particularly this one, make me dream to see this kind off Art Expression, spread all over the world... one day :)
By hard coding the values and using servos, you're worst nightmare is having to disassemble the gears at any point, because you will have to make aure it's aligned. The entire system relies on the gears not slipping at all, and there is no easy remedy for that (besides possibly offset by trial and error)
