Makeblock XY Plotter

Overview of the Arduino-based plotter.

Transcript

1. MAKEBLOCK XY PLOTTER MICHAEL FOGLEMAN 2016-01-14
3. Six hours later…
4. MAKEBLOCK XY PLOTTER HARDWARE ▸ Based on the Arduino Uno ▸ 2x Stepper Motor (X & Y Axis) ▸ 4x Limit Switch ▸ 1x Servo Motor (Pen Up & Down) ▸ 315 x 380 mm (12.5 x 15 in) Drawing Area ▸ Use any pen or other drawing utensil ▸ $299, available on Amazon 2016-01-14
5. MAKEBLOCK XY PLOTTER FIRMWARE ▸ Standard Arduino libraries, written in C ▸ Very rudimentary GCode support ▸ G28 = Home, G1 = Move ▸ M1 = Set Pen Position ▸ Very rudimentary motion planning ▸ But it’s Open Source, so we can hack it 2016-01-14
6. MAKEBLOCK XY PLOTTER SOFTWARE ▸ Ships with two different software packages ▸ mDraw (cross-platform & open source) ▸ Benbox (Windows-only & closed source) ▸ mDraw ▸ Load SVG file, position & scale it, draw it ▸ Few features, buggy 2016-01-14
7. MAKEBLOCK XY PLOTTER WRITE YOUR OWN SOFTWARE! ▸ Communicate over serial port (I used pyserial) ▸ Send ASCII GCode commands, wait for “OK” response ▸ If you can generate a sequence of 2D points, you can draw it! 2016-01-14
14. github.com/fogleman/xy github.com/fogleman/ln michaelfogleman.com