Chalk printer

2 Articles

Beautiful Sidewalk Graffiti Machine

December 11, 2015 by 22 Comments

Our hero [Alex] just built a sidewalk graffiti machine, and it’s a beauty to behold, so make sure you check out the video below the break. But don’t neglect [Alex]’s blog, and the build videos throughout. (Nice t-shirt in the wheel-making video, BTW.)

The machine itself is basically a two-meter wide printer where the roller is replaced with drive wheels. The frame, made of plywood, looks great and helps keep the machine light weight. Everything is done with DC motors and timing belts, which means motor encoders and closed-loop control in the firmware. It connects via a WiFi serial bridge, made with an ESP8266, to [Alex]’s cell phone.

Everything, from plans to software, is available on [Alex]’s GitHub for the project.

Continue reading “Beautiful Sidewalk Graffiti Machine” →

The ChalkJET: An Ink Jet Printer For The Streets

August 29, 2014 by 12 Comments

Need to do some guerrilla street advertising? What you need is the ChalkJET 9000, an ink jet printer on wheels.

Using two Arduino Duemilanoves for the brains, this little cart features eight cans of spray chalk which can be individually actuated. Small solenoids pull down on levers in order to spray the cans. Encoders on the wheels of the cart keep track of the spacing in between each pixel as the cart gets dragged along.

A small LCD mounted on the handle allows you to select which text you would like to print, but it doesn’t look like manual entry of new words is possible — You’ll need to load up a library while connected to a computer before hitting the streets!

Continue reading “The ChalkJET: An Ink Jet Printer For The Streets” →