[3D Printing Daily] Issue 237
Polar Drawing Robot
[ID:798076] This is the mechanical part I redesigned for building a wall-mounted Polar Drawbot.
I built my collection and mixed various information I found online.
I used ready-made parts from many projects for several tests, but none seemed to meet the requirements I wanted to achieve.
So I completely redesigned all parts.
After several trials, I developed three types of pulleys: one for smooth ropes, another made of ball chains for synchronous drive.
Three types of ball chains can be used: Ø 3.2 mm all-metal chain with a pitch of 4 mm, Ø 4.4 mm plastic balls and ropes with a pitch of 6 mm, Ø 4.4 mm plastic balls and ropes with a pitch of 12 mm.
They can be interchanged, just remember to change the pulley diameter in the machine settings, or you will get unsatisfactory results.
The overall dimensions, such as stepper motor shaft spacing or drawing area, can also be changed at your convenience (just remember to change them in the settings as well).
As a counterweight, I used some depleted “D” batteries, for which I made several brackets to suspend them.
Vertical Plotter Gondola v4 (also known as Polargraph)
[ID:478346]
This is an enhanced version of the gondola (pen holder) for simple vertical plotters (like Polargraph, Makelangelo, Drawbot) (but slightly more complex).
Compared to v3, this design has a movable ball chain mounting seat, which produces smoother movement and straighter lines. You will need some extra M3 bolts and nuts to connect these mounts to the base platform (see image).
The previous v3 required no assembly and had fewer bolts and nuts. Find v3 here: ID:472573
Makeangelo v1 Art Robot
[ID:26298]
This machine is like training wheels for a 3D printer. All the same technologies are stripped of the dangerous parts at 1/10 the price. Get the latest hot kit in kit form from the official website or download these printable parts and make your own at home.
Kritzlerbot Polargraph (Printable)
[ID:16692]
I like the axial mounting of the polargraph, but since I didn’t have suitable bearings, I printed the slip ring with PLA. The fit is very good, and it looks great with Teflon spray!
This still needs to be installed and tested. Note the tidy desk 😉
Tipibot – Drawing Robot
[ID:2304175] Tipibot is a drawing robot, or drawbot, inspired by Sandy Noble’s Polargraph project (http://www.polargraph.co.uk).
Wall-mounted plotter or upright printer, consisting of two stepper motors and a servo motor driven by Arduino, allowing you to move a pencil on any vertical surface from A4 to double A0 format.
Tipibot is developed in an open-source manner, all components are documented and easily available in professional stores.
Most parts are printed using a 3D printer, and if you don’t have a printer available, you can seek help from Fablab to manufacture these components.
Little Plotter (Doodler)
[ID:343322] If anyone wants to make one, I have uploaded some files here.
It works well, and I just need to make some adjustments to make it work better.
I used:
2 stepper motors 28byj-48 (with ULN2003 driver).
1 Arduino Uno.
1 Servo.
3D printed parts.
Everything was printed with a layer height of 0.27 mm and a fill rate of 10%.
I also uploaded some images of the drawing.
Whiteboard V-Plotter Drawing Robot
[ID:3829194] onshape link: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/52d1ab71c91651d218c15707/w/33baed9469c3694a61d4c722/e/a9addb2e5f9f96be031d09a0
Whiteboard Vertical Drawing Robot (No Counterweight) (WIP)
[ID:4710058] Redesign of the vertical pull robot, so no counterweight is needed.
Currently, I am using the Makelangelo software and firmware provided by www.marginallyclever.com[1] on an Arduino Mega 2560 R3 with an LCD 2004 screen and RAMPS 1.4 controller.
Even though the weight is 1 pound, my belt still slips when using the hanging weight; this design uses a belt without a counterweight in the gondola, but uses springs (from the 3D printer bed leveling kit) to push the bearings into the belt resting on the stepper pulley (clamped in the middle), which keeps the belt teeth in the pulley better than any counterweight would prevent slipping.
Its design allows for temporary connection to a large whiteboard. It uses 8 neodymium magnets (60mmx10mmx5mm) in the slots to help secure the components to the whiteboard. Clips prevent it from moving down or in. I divided the clips into 3 parts for easier printing.
I provided 4 different styles of clips, including one that helps secure it behind the circuit board.
I provided 3 different gondola counterweight boxes, but I used the smaller one, which works great.
The only real problem with the drawbot is the software. Most software can handle images and designs without issue, but they often aren’t optimized for specific use cases. In other words, when used on a whiteboard, most of the time it drags the gondola back and forth over previous lines, erasing some of them, whereas drawing from top to bottom would solve this problem, and I haven’t seen any software that can execute this setting.
I really hope to use it to write text on the whiteboard, but not only do most software drag existing text, but due to the nature of text vector drawing, most software only outputs large hollow letters. Filling hollow letters is also much harder than you might think. You can use special single-stroke fonts or Hershey Text plugins to solve this, but it usually requires additional steps. Simply taking a text file and having the drawing robot place it on the whiteboard from top to bottom with single-stroke letters is something I can’t do without a bunch of steps. I just wish I had time to learn Python (or Java in the case of Makelangelo) so I could fix these flaws myself.
I use Makelangelo, and in most cases, it allows me to do what I want with my drawing robot, except for letting me easily place text on the board from top to bottom.
Polar Drawbot for Makelangelo, Using Batteries as Counterweight
[ID:5183046] This is a mix of several parts needed to build my drawbot using Makelangelo software and Marlin 2.0.9+ firmware.
It uses LR 20 batteries as counterweights.
I used all parts from ID:3169670 as a support frame for the stepper and printed endstop-left.stl and endstop-right.stl to secure the endstop below the stepper.
All parts of the pen holder, also known as the gondola, are taken from ID:2494228 and combined with counterweight-4.stl.
I created a 3D printing technology exchange group, if interested, you can join the group by clicking the “Join Group” menu below the public account or reply “Join Group” to get the group QR code, as the group QR code is only valid for 7 days. If the group QR code expires, you can also add daniel_cats and he will pull you into the group.
If anyone has any types they need, please leave a message, I will select the types with more comments to produce a few more issues.
All model copyrights belong to the original authors, this is only for introduction and explanation, for learning purposes, and does not carry any profit motive. For specific model original copyrights, please check the original address.
Note: For more information about specific models, check directly with T Station ID on thingiverse.
References
[1] www.marginallyclever.com: http://www.marginallyclever.com