PlotterBot.

com
Good, Cheap, and
Fast. Choose two.

This is an easy to build, low cost, and

extremely forgiving first robotics project.
If you have a spare Arduino and a $20
motor shield, you could literally scavenge
everything else.
The catch? The robot draws relatively
slowly.

Parts/Scavenge List:
Arduino Uno or better
Adafruit Motor Shield
Two stepper motors (from old copiers,
fax machines, etc.)
9- to 12-volt power adapter (from old
electronics)

Materials:
Wood

Vertical surface such as a

Paper

wall, window, cardboard, or

Pens

plywood

Hardware:
Nuts, bolts, screws, and nails
Wood for spools, mounting brackets

Tools:
Drill

Hot glue gun

Screwdriver Soldering iron

Pliers

3D printer (optional)

Skills Necessary:
Soldering (for wire connections,
Adafruit Motor Shield)
Power drill (for drilling holes in wood)

Design Files:
All plastic parts open source and
freely available on Thingiverse, Thing
#73378
All software and firmware is open
source from Polargraph.co.uk
All hardware is open source from
Adafruit, SparkFun, and Sandy Noble

PlotterBot.com
Questions or Comments?
Tweet: @makerblock
E-mail: jay@makerblock.com

Go to PlotterBot.com to
be e-mailed a PDF of
all of these materials!

What is a PlotterBot?
A drawing robot!
I have named this robot a PlotterBot. It is an Arduino-based drawing
robot that uses two motors, two spools, lots of string, and a pen to draw
(really large) pictures. The drawing size is basically only limited by the
amount of string available. My own robot is a variation on a robot called a
Polargraph designed by Sandy Noble. Sandys robot named his robot a
Polargraph because is uses polar coordinates as it draws.

This style of drawing robot, one which uses two motors to control two
lines independently to create a drawing, is sometimes called a V-Plotter
because of the V shape formed by the two control lines.

How does it work?

Using math!
The robot reads a series of polar coordinates from a file on an SD card and
reels the two motorized spools of string in and out to change the point where
the two strings meet at the pen. The robot is programmed to use
trigonometry to determine where the pen holder is and where it needs to go.
It does this using the length of the two strings and the distance between the
two points where the strings leave the robot. Since the robot knows the
diameter of the two spools, it can easily convert the rotation of each spool
into a length of string.

I use the firmware and software from Sandy Nobles Polargraph. Its
reasonably easy to use, free, and completely open source. Dan Royer (of
marginallyclever.com) offers his own free open source software as well.
However, the hardware could be powered using custom software of your own
design.

What do you use it for?

Big, awesome drawings!
I use my robot for drawing large poster-sized pictures. I especially like
using it for single line drawings using a Traveling Salesman Problem
solver. My daughter enjoys coloring in the drawings with markers.
Others have used similar robots for creating drawings using chalk, pens,
markers or spraypaint to draw on chalkboards, whiteboards, walls, and even
windows. One group used a Polargraph to draw on sheets of cardboard to
create a huge bear sculpture. The video of the bear being assembled is pretty
spectacular. You can watch it here http://shor.tw/3g

What does it cost to build?

As little as $30!
You can build a functionally identical robot starting from around $30,
depending on your junk drawer and much work youre willing to put into it.

A bare-bones parts list would consist of an Arduino, an Adafruit Motor

Shield, two stepper motors, a power supply, two spools, some string or wire,
screws and scrap wood. Everything except the Arduino and motor shield
could be pulled from old printers, fax machines, or copiers found on the curb.

Since I sourced the parts specifically for this project, the total cost was
around $200. All the parts were from the hardware store, Adafruit, and
SparkFun. All of the plastic parts are of my own design and are available on
Thingiverse for downloading. Ive also described, in detail, all of my design
decisions in creating these parts. There isnt anything special about the parts
I designed except that I designed them and they suit the way I wanted to
build my robot mostly self-contained within a box.

Is it difficult to build?
Not at all!
As long as you can use basic tools (drill, screwdrivers, wire strippers) and
can handle some modest soldering you can build a PlotterBot of your own!
In fact, most of the parts of the robot could be swapped out for completely
different pieces and still retain the same exact core functionality:
Robot Brain. You could power a functionally identical robot with an
Arduino Uno (~$30) and an Adafruit Motor Shield (~$20). Im using an
Arduino Mega clone with a custom shield designed by Sandy Noble for
his Polargraph. However, you could upload the same software I use
into completely off the shelf parts. I decided to upgrade my robot
from a prior Arduino with an Adafruit Motor Shield version because the
Arduino Mega and custom shield allows me to print from an SD card
using a touchscreen and doesnt require the robot be tethered to a
computer.

 Spools. You could use almost anything to create similar spools. You
could use thread spools and fishing line, homemade spools and thread,
sprockets and beaded cords, or toothed belts and gears. I like the
simplicity of the spools and the near-invisibility of the fishing line.
This is the kind of part you might already have lying around in a junk
drawer.
Pen holder. Again, this could be made out of almost anything as long
as you have a hot glue gun. My prior pen holder was literally a piece of
cardboard, with fishing line tied to the cardboard, and a pen and
batteries hot glued to it. (The dead batteries were just to give it some
weight). It looked terrible, but it worked really well!

Everything else. While I use lots of custom plastic parts throughout

my robot, there is no reason you couldnt hack together motor mounts
out of some scrap wood. The best part about this robot is how
incredibly cheap and forgiving the basic design can be. My own design
uses lots of 3D printed plastic parts I designed myself. Prototyping all
the parts on my MakerBot Replicator let me iterate quickly through
various designs.

Are there similar robots out there?

Yes, several!
There are several other well known V-Plotter robots:
Hektor - http://hektor.ch/ - This is one of the first documented line
drawing robots and it used really long lines and spraypaint to draw huge
murals on walls.
Der Kritzler - http://tinkerlog.com/2011/09/02/der-kritzler/ - This robot
uses a servo to control a pen lift, toothed belts and sprockets to control
the pen, and was designed to draw directly on windows.
Polargraph - http://www.polargraph.co.uk/whats-a-polargraph/ - This
robot, designed by Sandy Noble uses sprockets and beaded cord (from
window blinds!) to control a pen holder. All of Sandys designs,
software, firmware, source code, and work are open source and freely
available. Occasionally he sells everything needed to build a
Polargraph as a kit.
My blog has a constantly updated list of more than 40 other similar drawing
robots here http://shor.tw/3f

How do you draw?

Using Polargraph firmware and controller
software.
My drawing robot uses the Polargraph firmware and software controller
by Sandy Noble (Polargraph.co.uk). The basic steps are as follows:
1) Upload Polargraph Arduino sketch into Arduino;
2) Install Polargraph controller software;
3) Adjust settings by entering the robots width between spools, paper
width, millimeters per rotation of motor, and the width of the pen lines;
4) Import and place/orient an image or vector;
5) Render image or vector so that it is converted into a series of polar
coordinates and machine instructions;
6) Send the instructions to the robot over a USB cable or, if youre using a
robot that can read SD chips, save the instructions to an SD chip;
7) Center the pen holder at a pre-defined home point; and
8) Draw!!!

How do you make the drawings?

The software renders shaded pixelized images
or vectors.
The Polargraph controller software can draw shaded pixelized drawings
and vectors out of the box. However, my favorite way to draw with my
robot is to create traveling salesman problem vector drawings.
The traveling salesman problem (or TSP) is the computationally
difficult problem of finding the most efficient path through a number of
points where the path cannot intersect or cross over itself. One particular
open source TSP solver allows for a relatively quick good enough result for
my purposes.
The process I use for for creating these TSP drawings is based on a
process published by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. The basic process is
to convert an image into a grayscale image, lighten the image, convert the
image into a point field, and then save the image as a list of those points,
which can then be fed into the TSP solver.
You can find my full tutorial on the MakerBot blog here http://shor.tw/3d

Where can I get parts?

Online retailers or from dumpster diving.
Heres what I bought and where:
Adafruit Industries
Arduino Uno
Adafruit Motor Shield
Stepper motors
Microservo
9-volt power adapter
Sparkfun
Super sweet rainbow ribbon cable (I could have used any kind of
wire, but these look AWESOME)
Sandy Noble / Polargraph (for upgraded robot here)
Freeduino
Polarshield SD and LCD Touchscreen Shield
Shopping list with links here: http://shor.tw/3e

Why custom plastic parts?

Modularity and maintainability.
I designed all of the plastic parts for the robot from scratch to make the
entire thing easy to disassemble and maintain with nothing more than a 3mm
hex wrench. Most of the parts fit together using a dovetail groove system
which is then tightened in place with a hex wrench. Since the paper roll is
mounted on the project box and the electronics dont need to be tethered to a
computer, the robot can be mounted semi-permanently onto a wall.

How could the robot be improved?

Better pens, balanced pen holder, and pen lifts.
I am constantly tinkering with ways to improve this robot. While Im
very happy with the overall setup and it works well very reliably, I could do a
lot more tests to find optimal pens, better weights and balances to the pen
holder, and make the pen lifts with the servo more reliable.

Where can I learn more?

PlotterBot.com
At PlotterBot.com youll be able to sign up to receive a complete copy of
all of these materials as a PDF along with update on the latest things Ive
learned about how to build and improve on drawing robots.