Here’s a fun way to break up the monotony in the old cubicle farm. The Mug Plotter will let you expertly inscribe your coffee vessel with a different witty saying or design for each day of the week. If it looks familiar that’s because it’s loosely based on the non-flat drawing robot, the Egg-Bot.
[Teed] built the machine using laser cut plywood parts. He starts off the build description with the griping technique. There are two parts to this, one is concave and fits in the mouth of the mug. The convex side grips the bottom edges of it. These parts go on the frame along with the slide and thread rods which hold the stylus. A servo motor is along for the ride, providing the ability to lift the marker when necessary.
You can see in the clip after the break that there’s a bit of oscillation in the rig when one of the steppers starts turning really fast. But it doesn’t seem to affect the look of the design very much at all.
Convex on the mouth, concave on the bottom.
Also, “griping”.
Tip the apparatus on its side and use a turntable instead. Could even fill up the mug for you while plotting a pretty graphic of the weather and your portfolio stats.
ditch the sharpie for a laser…etch some glasses
Someone needs to put some balancing weights on it before it shakes it’s self apart.
And “it’s”.
“It’s” is correct. It’s a contraction of “it is”. “Its” would be wrong, because it’s posessive.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/it%27s
The English language: it’s what it’s…
Few things to improve it.
Something to connect the inner and outer side frames. Set screws instead of machine screws for the all thread coupler. Maybe a second guide rod for the plotter arm. That should cut down the wobble some.
Why did he gripe first?
they really need to take a dremel to those screws securing the stepper to the threaded rod in order to to fix that oscillation. sure it doesn’t hurt the final product but it’s annoying and causes needless stress to the rig.
cool project. I’m thinking timing belt instead of threaded rod. you can see that the linear motion is much slower than the rotational. belt fix that.
Wow! That’s awesome! I think that the new way of 3D printing is going to be a combination of ‘traditional’ SLS and FDM 3D printing techniques combines with a flexible and more-than-3-axes tool. Like a robot or a CNC with an extruder tool.
has anyone thought of anything better than a sharpie to print on the mugs? yes sharpies last a while but the detergents that are used for cleaning dishes can get pretty harsh and i know they will wash it off in a fairly short amount of time.
I thought that was the point.
“Didn’t you have a dog on your mug yesterday?”
“Nope. It’s always been a hat. Are you feeling okay?”
well i got looking i’m curious if the paint markers would work better.
while it might be the point that it does wash off in a short amount of time, if you set it up for kids to make custom cups and stuff for themselves having it last a little longer would be great.
surely that would just be a case of replacing the sharpie, couldn’t be more obvious!
yes replace the sharpie i agree, but with what was my question?
I though you were supposed to bake the ink and/or coat it after. It’s not really a problem though, you have a cup plotter to redraw the picture whenever you need to.
while I do think this is very cool and a great way to get ppl into some form of cnc it looks and sounds so much like it has come fresh off the drawing board that it is barely finished! If I wanted to receive instructions on how to build this I would not want to be left to think that the piss poor instructions would have me making the squeaky, unbalanced thing in the video that looks like it will fall apart if you sneeze on it. An instructable this does not deserve! It’s not even finished!
I think instructables is the other page, these are hacks. Just sayin
You Rule!! Great project. I would love to have one of my own. Everybody here thinks like an engineer and wants to improve it. Don’t take it in a bad way.