[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ES61MbSmpc]
The Motori plotter is fast and high precision. One image shows that it is drawing lines at .5mm. Like others in the flickr set, we keep thinking of how we could apply this to PCB creation. Great job [svofski]. If you want one that’s not as precise, but might have a much cooler drawing mechanism, you might want to check out the lego arm plotter we posted back in May.
Check out this awesome tool that [Alfonso Martone] built and wrote in to tell us about: a pin plotter made entirely from Lego (except for the addition of a pin in one brick). [Alfonso] has managed to get 33dpi resolution with a “printable” area of 90x70mm. The NXT device reads 1bit bitmapped images in PBM format and outputs onto a sheet of paper, which is held in place by Lego pneumatics pushing against rubber Lego bricks. Output is not what you might call speedy, though: it takes 35-40 minutes to output a drawing with 1,500 holes.
[Romado12187] just posted a walkthrough of his mechanical dry erase board project on Instructables. It was on display in the Microsoft booth last weekend at Maker Faire. Unlike [sprite_tm]’s version we covered earlier, this one is built more like a traditional pin plotter. The construction was done entirely in [Romado12187]’s dorm room and uses plywood and PVC pipes for the majority of the frame. The mechanical components were purchased from SDP/SI and the controller hardware are Phidgets. He included a joystick, but it also has a C# command line program for control. [Romado12187]’s write up also has a lot of improvements to help make your first attempt better than his; buying a premounted board and being very exact in calculating motor power are recommended. Catch a video of the plotter in action after the jump.
