#16 Mechanical Design / Machine Design

THE PIXEL ART MACHINE (Lab Page Documentation)

This assignment was for me a revelation. The fact of working in a team and take it forward together was a discovery that collaborative work brings results that exceeded my expectations.

Despite seeing how other people had been suffering with this assignment, we calmly face it, also having the time against us. We were first so dedicated to assemble the entire structure. Put the 4 motors in their respective cardboard laser cut cases. Then we had some problems with the configuration of the Gestalt boards, but the team was able to resolve quickly, before we expected we got to try them. One by one they were working until we have the 4 of them running perfectly coordinated.

Then came the moment of decision on what type of machine we want to do. After all of us set out some ideas quickly we decided to turn our machine into a kind of plotter that "draw" pixels and achieve transforming photographs into images painted with a marker (Sharpie).

And so it was born "The Pixel Art Machine".

Part of the group set about developing the code to transform images into coordinates, so we can send them to the machine and achieve the desired result. While I was in charge of designing the arm that would be subject to "Z" axis and hold the marker.

After a few iterations we got the machine working as we had thought. Certainly has a number of details to adjust and to achieve images with higher fidelity, but for purposes of this study, and given an artistic vision, the result is fascinating.

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