Artistic Pen Printer V 2.0

Caracteristics & infos

The main difference with the previous version is the motor used. Instead of using servomotors and regular motors in the V.1, I used 3 stepper-motors. Those kind of motor are very efficient when you want to have a very precise degree and speed control. I thus used 3 A3967 stepper controllers (I bought 6 of them in case they broke, and indeed, I broke 3 of them by failing the soldering...). You may ask why using 3 motors when I am making a 2 axis machine. The reason is simple, I prefered using 2 stepper motors for the same axis because I have not put a motor exactly at the center so the moving was not smooth. You can see the 3 motors on this image :

The whole thing is powered by a 12V transformator, and an arduino Mega to control the stepper-controllers. One of the biggest problem is the heat emmited from the motors when used, which is harmless but is a sign that there is a loss of energy.

A cart can then move on a two axis plane. On this cart is attached a servomotor on which is attache a pen. The pen can be up or down depending on the angle of the servo. A 3D printed structure and an elastic help move the pen in the right direction.

I made a software that turn a normal png/jpg image into a kind of code I created for the opportunity. It basically tells the arduino how many lines there is, where they start and where they stop. The arduino's software then deal with it and make the calculations to move on the right spot the pen. The arduino is pluged in serial to a PC, so the informations transfers very fast.

Results

Here are some drawings I made with this machine. The time spent on each of them is around 2h (yes, very much longer than the V.1.0)