It’s not a day too late to switch your career from engineering to art or vice-versa! While some of us tend far towards one end or the other, some like [Chris] show us just how cool it is to walk the line… er, ceiling in this case. [Chris] took a cue from his fiancée’s latest mural project to create an automated painting jig he calls ARTbOT.

Spraying the ceiling with ARTbOT sounds like fun, but it’s a dream [Chris] needed to realize with only his spare time and small budget. Constraints aside, he’s pulled it off elegantly with a cluster of extruded aluminum tubing, a few paint sprayers, and a LabView-driven Fet triggered by encoder ticks on the drop wheel. To pain the image, it’s first binarized and scaled to accommodate ARTbOT’s 8-inch pixel size. ARTbOT then gets a boost from a scissor-lift where it can then track it’s linear position with the drop wheel to spray the pixel-pattern correctly.

[Chris] pulled this rig together to help his fiancée and her art company tackle huge canvases, in this case, large freeway underpasses. With preliminary studio tests running smoothly with ARTbOT proudly printing its name, we can’t wait to see the final piece. In the meantime, have a look at this edgy handheld alternative. Watch out mural artists! There’s an 8-bit contender in the ring these days.

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