Badges come in all shapes and sizes, but a badge that draws on a stack of Post-It notes is definitely a new one. The design uses three of the smallest, cheapest hobby servos reasonably available and has a drawing quality that creator [Bart Dring] describes as “adorably wiggly”. It all started when he decided that the CNC and mechanical design world needed to be better represented in the grassroots demo scene that is the badge world, and a small drawing machine that could be cheaply made from readily available components seemed just the ticket.
Two arms control the position of a pen, and a third motor lifts the assembly in order to raise or lower the pen to the drawing surface. Gravity does most of the work for pen pressure, so the badge needs to be hanging on a lanyard or on a tabletop in order to work. An ESP32 using [Bart]’s own port of Grbl does the work of motion control, and a small stack of Post-It notes serves as a writing surface. Without the 3D printed parts, [Bart] says the bill of materials clocks in somewhere under $12.
We’ve seen similar designs doing things like writing out the time with a UV LED, but a compact DrawBot on a badge is definitely a new twist and the fact that it creates a physical drawing that can be peeled off the stack also sets it apart from others in the badgelife scene.
Super cute!
Grassroots demo scene? Guys, please don’t. This is embarrassing.
Ordinary hackers = grassroots
who like to show off their work = demo
who are forming a community around this activity = scene
Right, it would work if demoscene hasn’t been a thing for ~30 years already. And it has always been as grass roots as it gets.
yeah, but how dare you use the word thing without recognising Thing T. Thing of the Addams family who was a thing before thing was a thing.
Thing wasn’t a thing before thing was a thing, though. Thing had been a thing, long before Thing was a thing.
Trying to make Thing a thing again after Thing has ceased to be a thing and well after thing was the thing Thing was made a thing of was already a thing, is absurd.
I’m still waking up, but does it look to anyone else that this doesn’t really leverage a decent amount of the servo’s range of motion? Not sure if that’s intentional so you can draw on A5 on a tabletop or something.
Also we’ve seen this pantograph style of plotter with servos thing before, I was looking for it the other day, but must have been using wrong keywords, does anyone remember it?
Size and time constraints probably played a part in this. I know that I’ve also spent (wasted?) a huge amount of time tweaking my own laser cutter/engraver beyond the initial “proof of concept” state!
I’m sorry, you can’t call it ”adorably wiggly” unless you post”it” a video of it working somewhere.
Except that was describing the final image, not the motion of the bot itself. And there’s a photo of the jolly wrencher that looks gosh darn “adorably wiggly” to me…
this would have been the perfect time for a 500mb gif or a video.
Looks like Bart is bringing it to the Supercon. We’ll get you some video.
Bart, if you’re out there, bring a few of your portables, and maybe we can do an interview / feature?