Schlagwort: Pen Plotter

  • Transform trash into treasure with the DIY Bottle Plotter

    Transform trash into treasure with the DIY Bottle Plotter

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline just for that) and some of it can be quite beautiful. But it usually still ends up in the landfill or, at best, in a recycling center. However, if you’re the type of person who can see the beauty in wine bottles, mason jars, and tin cans, then you can build the Bottle Plotter to transform trash into treasure.

    This machine, developed by VGaman, is a CNC pen plotter with one linear axis swapped out for a rotary axis. That means that instead of plotting on a traditional XY plane, it plots around a cylinder. The “pen” can be anything that fits in the holder and the possibilities are almost endless. Paint markers seem especially well-suited to this kind of work, but there are certainly other options that may produce interesting results on some materials.

    The Bottle Plotter is relatively affordable to build, as most of the parts are 3D-printable. The exceptions are fasteners, bearings, rods, and the electronic components. Those electronics include an Arduino UNO Rev3 board, a CNC shield, and stepper motors. VGaman’s design does include a Z axis (to move the pen closer to and further from the workpiece surface), so the machine requires three stepper motors. 

    The Arduino runs GRBL firmware and can accept any compatible G-code. The easiest way to generate that G-code is with a plugin for Inkscape, which will let users create artwork and then plot that all within one piece of software. Swap pens between toolpaths to make cool multicolor designs!

    The post Transform trash into treasure with the DIY Bottle Plotter appeared first on Arduino Blog.

    Website: LINK

  • Plotting AI-generated art onto paper

    Plotting AI-generated art onto paper

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    AI-generated art is all the rage right now, thanks to widespread sharing on social media. The appeal is obvious: anyone can utilize an online service to create a unique (and often hilarious) piece of art based on a simple prompt. To display that art, one can utilize a high-quality printer or a digital photo frame. Or they can follow the lead of Eric Oaks, who built this pen plotter named “Drew” that draws AI-generated art onto paper.

    This pen plotter works with DALL-E 2, which is a popular AI art generator model from OpenAI. Like most AI art models, DALL-E 2 costs money to use. But OpenAI gives users 50 free credits to start and another 15 free credits each month. Oaks utilizes the DALL-E 2 API to generate a new piece of art using the credits he has available, then plots that image onto paper.

    The pen plotter in question is a DIY machine that Oaks constructed using linear rails, stepper motors, and an Arduino Uno board with a CNC Shield that runs Grbl firmware. The computer connected to the Arduino takes the DALL-E 2-generated art in bitmap format and converts it to vector art, which contains line paths. It then translates those line paths into g-code that the Grbl firmware can understand, so the plotter can draw the lines.

    This works really well for art pieces that look good as line art. Oaks even created a one-player Pictionary mode, in which the player can try to guess the randomly chosen prompt used to generate a piece of art.

    The post Plotting AI-generated art onto paper appeared first on Arduino Blog.

    Website: LINK

  • This pen plotter gets nervous when observed

    This pen plotter gets nervous when observed

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    The whole purpose of machine automation is to eliminate human needs and errors. A CNC machine doesn’t get tired, doesn’t need breaks, and performs a task exactly the same way every time. But what if that weren’t true? What if machines experienced human emotions and let it affect their work like we do? That’s the idea behind Devlin Macpherson’s Nervous Drawing Machine.

    By all outward appearances, this is just a standard two-axis pen plotter. Like many laser cutters and 3D printers, it has a stepper motors controlled by an Arduino board that follows G-code commands. A command might be something like “move the X axis 2mm to the right.” By chaining hundreds or thousands of those commands together, the machine can follow complex toolpaths that form letters, symbols, pictures, or anything else. Macpherson equipped the pen plotter with a continuously fed roll of paper so it can draw indefinitely.

    Under normal conditions, the machine plots row after row of little squares. A video camera points at the plotter as it works and the video feed streams through a website. And this is where things get interesting. If someone visits the website and watches the stream, the pen plotter becomes nervous about being observed. It will then start to make mistakes, like drawing scribbles instead of squares. Once the visitor leaves the website and the machine is unobserved once again, it will return to drawing perfect rows of squares.

    Macpherson built the Nervous Drawing Machine for his thesis project titled ICFWYWM (I Can’t Focus When You’re Watching Me). Like all good interactive art installations, it reflects the human condition.

    The post This pen plotter gets nervous when observed appeared first on Arduino Blog.

    Website: LINK

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

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

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    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

  • Pen plotter? Laser engraver? This DIY machine gives you both!

    Pen plotter? Laser engraver? This DIY machine gives you both!

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    Pen plotter? Laser engraver? This DIY machine gives you both!

    Arduino Team — October 30th, 2019

    If you find yourself debating between a pen plotter or laser engraver, this project by Patrick Panikulam lets you have the best of both worlds in style. The DIY device pulls a writing instrument in the X-axis using a belt-driven overhead system, while the base itself moves in the Y direction.

    Motion is handled by an Arduino Uno, along with a CNC shield and two A4988 drivers that actuate modified 28BYJ-48 steppers. The shield also outputs laser control signals, which are converted into PWM signals for the lifting servo when in pen mode. 

    It’s an extremely clean build, and even features a Bluetooth module for wireless communication with your computer. Panikulam provides more details here if you’d like to create your own!

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoUSUZkdm_A?feature=oembed&w=500&h=375]

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Q2u5dZU74?feature=oembed&w=500&h=375]

    A couple of months back while checking out a few laser engravers on aliexpress, I came across some USB powered laser engravers. It was awesome that these could engrave on a variety of materials and also cut out shapes and designs from sticker sheets and paper and doing all this powered by a 5V USB supply. But the downside of these engravers was that they had a small work area, in most cases just 40mm X 40mm which is definitely way too small for my needs.

    So I thought why not design and 3D print my own laser engraver from scratch. I started the designing process in Fusion 360 while keeping in mind all the 3D printing tolerances. And finally came up with something really cool. Along the way, I decided to make the laser holder modular so that I can easily replace the laser with a pen or marker for pen plotting. I also added a Bluetooth connectivity feature so that wired connection between your PC and the engraver can be eliminated while transmitting G-codes.

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    Website: LINK

  • We love a good pen plotter

    We love a good pen plotter

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    BrachioGraph touts itself as the cheapest, simplest possible pen plotter, so, obviously, we were keen to find out more. Because, if there’s one thing we like about our community, it’s your ability to recreate large, expensive pieces of tech with a few cheap components and, of course, a Raspberry Pi.

    So, does BrachioGraph have what it takes? Let’s find out.

    Raspberry Pi pen plotter

    The project ingredients list calls for two sticks or pieces of stiff card and, right off the bat, we’re already impressed with the household item ingenuity that had gone into building BrachioGraph. It’s always fun to see Popsicle sticks used in tech projects, and we reckon that a couple of emery boards would also do the job — although a robot with add-on nail files sounds a little too Simone Giertz, if you ask us. Simone, if you’re reading this…

    You’ll also need a pencil or ballpoint pen, a peg, three servomotors, and a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero. That’s it. They weren’t joking when they said this plotter was simple.

    The plotter runs on a Python script, and all the code for the project has been supplied for free. You can find it all on the BrachioGraph website, here.

    We’ll be trying out the plotter for ourselves here at Pi Towers, and we’d love to see if any of you give it a go, so let us know in the comments.

    Website: LINK

  • Control a vintage Roland pen plotter with Raspberry Pi

    Control a vintage Roland pen plotter with Raspberry Pi

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    By refitting a vintage Roland DG DXY-990 pen plotter using Raspberry Pi, the members of Liege Hackerspace in Belgium have produced a rather nifty build that writes out every tweet mentioning a specific hashtag.

    Liege Hackerspace member u/iooner first shared an image of the plotter yesterday, and fellow Redditors called for video of the project in action immediately.

    Watch the full video here. And to see the code code for the project, visit the Liege Hackerspace GitHub.

    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