Re-mech
We all use technology, but we should also understand it. A project by Niki Göransson and Julia Peintner. We made a machine for Worth pop-up shop, that produced manuals on how to build your own DIY machine, working as a starting point for other non-engineers who have the creative interest of mechanics, but not the confidence. These manuals were being sold at the shop, next to the demonstration of the drawing machine.
A list of our inspirations:
Thomas Thwaits' The Toaster Project
How to make your own arduino printer The Human Printer
Demolishing
We opened up an old cd-player and an old printer to find as much reusable parts as possible. We found two dc motors in the cd-player and switches. In the printer we found gears and parts we could use for heads.
Our technician at our university said that it was possible to make a printer, but as neither me nor Julia has gotten much experience in mechanical engineering, electronics not much in Arduino then it will be kind of a struggle and hard to get it functioning nicely and as it is a printer it needs to function very precisely. Me and Julia’s idea was to kind of show how technology doesn’t have to be complicated, but he said that a printer is actually a quite sophisticated and complex device.
He said maybe a drawing machine would be more realistic, as it doesn’t require the same level of preciseness as a printer does. He told me about the site www.instructables.com where people upload stuff they’ve made and show how they did it. He told me to look there for some ideas of less complicated devices we could build. Our vision was to make a printer as it is something everyone uses and a drawing machine isn’t something people have at home. It doesn’t really suit the purpose. We looked through tutorials about the simplest printers, and it feels like it is still possible. Even if its gonna print really bad stuff…..
Being Creative and Persistent
This is our work table. We have four dc-motors, a lot of gears and one rack with pinion, which is going to be connected with a pen and a servo motor. A servo motor can make things go from left to right, while a dc-motor spins around. We are going to put three pens in line, one spinning and making a circle shape, one drawing lines and one spinning but put on the side so there will be vertical lines. We will make all the gears and physical stuff function now and then go to the technicians on Tuesday after the crit to plug it in and then put in the programming in the Arduino so that the motors can be controlled.
Getting There!
This is how the drawing machine looks right now. It needs legs to hold it up and a servo motor to be installed. Also we need the Arduino that we have ordered to arrive so that we can connect it to get power and programming on it.
Legs and Arduino
This is from the wood workshop and when we just got the servomotor installed properly and we are playing with changing the settings from the laptop.
A Pen Is Installed!
Finale
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Here is the final product!