Schlagwort: Arduino Plotter

  • This high-speed Arduino pen plotter creates drawings in mere minutes

    This high-speed Arduino pen plotter creates drawings in mere minutes

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Arduino Team — June 21st, 2022

    Pen plotting projects are everywhere nowadays, with the vast majority using a couple of stepper motors for moving the writing utensil and a servo to raise or lower it. But they are quite slow due to the lack of rigid assembly and because the servo motor takes around a second to move the pen. This problem is what drove YouTuber IV Projects to create a very novel design that swaps out the servo for another stepper motor and drastically increases drawing speed.

    Just like most other pen plotters, the X-axis is driven by a NEMA17 stepper motor with a timing belt attached to the central pen carriage. However, the Y-axis takes a different approach by relying on a pair of rollers that are covered in 120-grit sanding bands, which help to grab the paper securely and move it whenever the stepper motor rotates the drive wheel. This helps to minimize slipping compared to rubber rollers and is much faster than a belt-driven design.

    Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this plotter is the lack of a servo motor for lifting the pen during travel movements. At the top sits one more NEMA17 stepper that spins upwards or downwards to lift a paddle which, in turn, raises the pen off the paper. Controlling the three motors is an Arduino Uno running the GRBL firmware that receives G-code and transforms it into physical movements.

    You can watch IV Projects’ video to below see the design in more detail.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX90X4rVUr8?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

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    Website: LINK

  • Plot designs onto cups with CylinDraw

    Plot designs onto cups with CylinDraw

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    Arduino Team — January 18th, 2022

    Most plotters are planar, meaning they move in a single plane — though they often have the ability to move the tool up and down in the third axis. But if you convert one axis of the drawing plane into rotation, you get cylindrical plotting. That is how the rotary axis on a CNC machine works. If the tool moves in a third axis, you can even do conical plots. That’s exactly how CylinDraw makes it possible to plot directly onto cups and glasses.

    CylinDraw is an open source “cup-specific” plotter and engraver. It is a 2.5 axis machine with a rotary axis, similar to the famous EggBot egg plotter. Except instead of drawing onto the elliptical (in cross section) surface of an egg, CylinDraw plots onto the straight or sloped surface of cups, bottles, and similar objects. By equipping a Dremel or other rotary tool, you can also engrave onto a surface instead of drawing. If you do draw, the software also lets you swap pens to get a full color palette.

    An Arduino Nano board controls CylinDraw’s operation, including the stepper motors that rotate the cup and move the tool along the X axis. The frame and many of the parts, including the lathe-inspired chuck, are 3D-printed. But it is the software that really differentiates CylinDraw from similar plotters. With this software, you can automatically convert images into G-code toolpaths for the Arduino to follow for plotting.

    CylinDraw is currently available as a DIY hardware kit on Etsy if you want to build one for yourself.

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    Website: LINK

  • PVC pipe plotter prints pretty pictures

    PVC pipe plotter prints pretty pictures

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    Arduino Team — January 5th, 2022

    Instructables user tuenhidiy wanted to create a new kind of CNC plotter that was unlike nearly all of the others you’ve seen. Rather than use aluminum extrusions or wood, this machine is constructed from various pieces of PVC pipe all cut to exact lengths, hence its name, the “CoreXZ Puzzle Pipe Plotter.”

    Electronics wise, the plotter runs on an Arduino Uno loaded with an instance of the ubiquitous GRBL firmware. Stacked on top was a CNC GRBL shield, which has three A4988 stepper motor drivers for delivering current to three NEMA17 motors. 

    To assemble this PVC CNC machine, tuenhidiy started by building the lower frame from a plethora of T-joints and connectors along with several inserts for attaching the aluminum rods. The plate at the bottom of the machine glides across the Y axis via a pair of aluminum rods and a set of bearings whereas the perpendicularly placed X axis is stationary and moves in a similar manner using one stepper motor placed to the side. Across from this motor is another one, which manipulates the Z axis vertically. 

    After adding a pen and connecting the motors to the shield, tuenhidiy opened the Universal Gcode Platform application and added a few different toolpaths for testing. As shown in the following video, the plotter does a great job at drawing both pictures and text accurately. For more details about this project, check out its tutorial on Instructables.

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    Website: LINK

  • d.i.d. is a scalable 3D-printed pen plotter

    d.i.d. is a scalable 3D-printed pen plotter

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    d.i.d. is a scalable 3D-printed pen plotter

    Arduino Team — August 29th, 2019

    While computer printers are readily available, if you’d like a plotting device that drags a pen, marker, or whatever you need across paper to create images, your options are more limited. To fill this gap, studioprogettiperduti has come up with the d.i.d, or Deep Ink Diver.

    This scalable pen plotter uses a frame made out of 3D-printed parts, as well as aluminum extrusion, which could be lengthened to support the size of paper that you need. A timing belt pulls the writing carriage back and forth, while a roller advances the paper. 

    Control is handled by an Arduino Uno and a CNC shield, with a version of grbl that accommodates a servo used to lift the pen.

    The materials and electronics used for the plotter are all standard and easy to source. The main frame is made of aluminum extrusion and 3D-printed connections. The motors are all standard NEMA 17 stepper motors and a single SG-90 servo motor. Everything is driven by a cheap Arduino Uno control board that handles the transition from g-code to movement. Furthermore, the software used to create G-code, Inkscape, is open source as well.

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    Website: LINK