Final project concept / Drawing machine

*Brainstorm some concepts for your final project. You don’t have to commit to these, just come up with a few ideas in which you are interested. Include a brief description and an illustration.*

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– DRAWING MACHINE-

final project concept

I really wanted to create a drawing machine at some point of PCOMP. Based on Pete Prodoehl’s drawing machine, I made my first approach, with most of the materials on hand (wood dowels, electric tape, hot glue, potentiometers, wires, breadboard and an Arduino UNO, only the servo motors were bought), it was a possible task [in theory].

With the materials, a reference and a little understanding of how to write in code on the Arduino IDE, a clumsy drawing machine came to live. The machine had several problems, the fragile fabrication (product of rapid prototyping) made the pen to fall off or to slowly turn diagonally; the weight of the components made the machine to fall on its side or completely apart; the communication between the motors was none existing, making the movements independent from each motor, translating in random, chaotic, Pollock-like kind of lines.

From the beginning, the idea was for the drawing machine to work in a Cartesian space. Figuring out the coming together between the code and the mechanism was a big challenge.

My final project is to continue this endeavour: to build a drawing machine that actually draws under a fluid control from the user.

[ types of drawing machines ](My drawing machine)