Machine design

Machine design posts...

• Chinese calligraphy G-code encoder  |  2017 May 17 |  12 minute read

When writing Chinese characters, there are rules. You can either abide or you will be revealed a fraud. When we first tested the machine, we tried several online g-code generators (link?). One thing we did not find was a good way to specify stroke ordering and directionality. I was excited to show some Chinese people the first successful tests of our machine and everyone criticized the machine's stroke order! I started to investigate the possibility to write code we could use to generate g-code which follows the basic principals for patterning strokes in Chinese characters. And, this was a good...

• Prototyping the infinity axis  |  2017 Apr 23 |  5 minute read

Now we have an operational prototype. Now we have a barely operational prototype. We decided I would focus on the mechanics of the second prototype. I wanted to improve several aspects of the first prototype. One, the robot should be easily portable, which I think works best if it can be easily dissambled and assembled. Two, the wheels do not balance the robot. Three, the effector and stage should be customized to the dimensions and requirements of this robot. In this section I will focus on the wheels, or the (Y) axis, the infinity axis. First, Saverio found this video...

• Prototyping a belt axis  |  2017 Apr 23 |  3 minute read

The Gestalt linear stage used a screw drive mechanic which we thought would be too limiting dimensionally for our purposes. Therefore, we decided to change this axis to a belt drive mechanic. I also wanted to see if this axis could be freed from the cardboard structure of the Gestalt model so it might have interchangeable rod lengths. I went about designing these pieces thinking three-d printing would be the optimal method because I could make non-planar things without worrying about connections and alignments. Three-d printing is slow. Three-d printing, however, is also passive which lets me focus on other...

• Prototyping the effector  |  2017 Apr 22 |  4 minute read

The effector pushes the brush into the drawing surface and pulls it away. Included in the mechanism is the flow of water from the reservoir into the brush tip. This design uses a 2BBYJ-48 stepper motor we had in stock in the lab. Precision of movement is not needed. In the design of the stage, I left some gaps that could be used to attach an effector shield. We also looked at an effector designed by Simone Boasso previously. With these starting points, I designed this: I created a larger guide for the vertical movement with a perpindicular axis for...

• Fabricating a gestalt stage  |  2017 Apr 04 |  6 minute read

After much intense strategic consternation, we decided to begin our project by developing through the Gestalt framework. The framework is developed; we are beginners. Can we connect rotary stages on either side of a linear stage equipped with a brush effector? The idea is similar to a common CNC machine. Wheels mobilize the whole assembly along an infinite X axis. A stage holding an effector moves a limited distance between two wheels (Y). The effector moves a minimal distance along the Z axis. The first step is to fabricate a linear stage. Download the Rhinoceros file and you may need...

• Machine precedents  |  2017 Mar 27 |  8 minute read

Over the past couple months we have been learning to use tools for fabrication and coding. Now, we are faced with the challenge to pull these tools together into a fabbed robot. My initial concept is a Seymour Papert "turtle" inspired drawing robot that can use water to write poetry in Chinese characters on outdoor concrete ground surfaces. First I will survey the drawing bot landscape. Dishu is "earth writing or practicing ephemeral calligraphy on the ground using clear water as ink." The imagined robot would be mobile using legs or wheels, battery-powered, use water through a brush to make...