FabLab@Strathclyde Drawing Machine
The assignment for this weeks Mechanical design is to as a group - make a machine, including the end effecter - build the passive parts and operate it manually - document the group project and your individual contribution The assignment for this weeks Machine design is to as a group : - automate your machine - document the group project and your individual contribution For the project Fab Academy sent us out a pack for building the machine and we have build it and program it to do whatever we would like it to do. We decided to create a drawing machine.
Work Division
First of all we worked together to make a plan of what to build and how to build it. We decided to create a drawing robot with bar set horizontally with one of the motors on it and a pen. This horizontal bar is mounted on carriages at either end of the horizontal bar. The vertical bars on either side also have motors on them to move the horizontal bar up and down.Controlling these means we can create drawing robot.
We didn't have the required cardboard for the project so we set about making a different modular design that would use 3mm ply cut on the laser.
Graham & Loraine started working on designing modular pieces that we could use to:
1) hold the bars in place
2) hold the motors
3) create a carriage that bars can slide through all of these pieces are pretty much modular with one or 2 alterations. We also tried some 3D printed pieces for this. Making some 3d printed parts means labs or people that have access to 3D printers but not laser cutting can still make these. So we've altered the physical parts of the design.
The other pieces we need were:
4) a base to mount all of the components on
5) a pen holder
Iain started working on the getting the stepper motors set up and working with the driver boards and PyGestalt.
Jialin started working on software that takes in a jpeg image and create a CSV file compatible with the machine.
Sample Drawings
The software workflow is to use StipleGen2 to create an SVG and then a small MATLAB script to convert the SVG to a CSV file of plotting coordinates. Here are some sample images we've made.Evil Minion
Wellington Statue
