Drawing machine

ENIHCAM GNIWARD {FAINA IASEN //BHSAD, BA Product Design, lvl. 4

}

//HARDUINO LABBOOK

Harduino project

Introduction

How to make a great

This project is not just about

interactive project for both kids and adults

making a machine that draws.

It is about prototyping,

The path form a sketch to a working drawing

gearing, coding and combining physical with

machine

digital. In short, every skill that

How to learn coding in 4 month by watching Indian YouTube guys

a designer needs to be able to prototype anything that has any mechanism in it (does not matter if it is analogue or digital).Â

THE VERY BEGINNING

CHOICE OF IDEA

INITIAL IDEAS AND CHOSEN IDEA DEVELOPMENT

OUR PROCESS OF CHOOSING THE IDEA

OUR INITIAL IDEAS a system that wets a piece of paper and then a DC motor would splash liquid paint or ink on it for it to bleed beautifully; Use a fan to blow at the powder pigments that fall from the containers on top. A joystick to control the motions of the containers;

THE FINAL IDEA MACHINE FOR KIDS Kinda like a CNC that only uses two axes and goes to random values when a button is pressed. Draws with a wax crayon or pencil.

After the drawing is done it has to be stamped with a sponge filled with ink to develop the drawing.

Make a CNC that would draw with random dots on a piece of paper and the user then has to connect them into a picture and ad to it their imagination - kinda like an exercise;

DEVELOPMENTS The user will stamp the drawing manually using provided sponge and ink; Instead of the Y axes the bottom plane will be a rotating circle; Even more randomness; Controls panel with lots of buttons;

PROCESS STAGES 01

PROTOTYPING

02

CODING

03

MAKING

Mechanism and materials try outs

Finding and writing the code

Final machine building

THE METHOD OF TRIAL AND ERROR IN ACTION

PROTO TYPING

STICKS AND HOT GLUE ARE OUR BEST FRIENDS

HOW WE LEARNED QUICK PROTOTYPING

FIRST ATTEMPTS We started prototyping our machine from the scratch - we used the material found in the trash bins of the 3D workshop and assembled the first prototype. It was unsuccessful since we use a string attached to a stepper motor to move the plane in Y axes. The string was falling off all the time and was extremely unstable. We tried to use some rubber bands but the result wasn't much better. So we started looking for other options.

Many people on the internet advise to use drawer rails but we decided to try another way that is more tedious but was also supposed to work better - we built a system of rails and gears on which the motor would move itself and anything attached to it. That way it was much more stable although not very aesthetically pleasing. Which was not a big problem as our main goal at the time was not machine's appearance, but its working mechanism.

FIRST OBSTACLES After building the rails we found out that our motor lacks the strength to perform even such a simple action as moving itself along the rail. So we sought advice and were told

by Angus to build a reduction mechanism.

And we did. But it was a nightmare. At first, we used some online software to generate the gears and then I made a custom rail for the output gear. But I made them out of cardboard as a tryout and then out of plywood. Which was not the brightest idea as plywood was grabbing itself and jamming the whole reductor. But after a discussion with Monica, I tried to cut it out of plexiglass and (after several more tortures with sanding and glueing) it worked perfectly! With the only exception that the motor was again too week and the moment we put ANY pressure on it, it would stop completely. Which meant - we need a better motor.

FINDING THE MOTOR OF OUR DREAMS. OR NIGHTMARES?

NEMA 17 STEPPER After some research and web surfing, we found a motor that seemed sufficient enough for our needs - Nema 17 stepper motor. It was recommended by many people working with Arduino and it is also often used in quadrocopter production. Which In my opinion should mean it is good. So, we bought two of those and two drivers for them (since they cannot be controlled without those). And the nightmare began. It is really complex to control through the code, it is tedious to change any settings of it like speed/smoothness of the movement. And it is dangerous. Both to your health and your wallet. As it burns the drivers all the time, needs a 12V power supply and is expensive itself. We ourselves only bought 9 drivers (and burned 5).

ONE BIG PROBLEM But the main problem with this motor in our case is not ist price or dangerousness. It is its weight. The thing is really heavy and therefore has to give a very solid support that won't tremble under it and still function properly. So it was a challenge for me to come up with a moving system that would: a. not require a reductor; b. be strong enough to carry the Nema ; c. be balanced ; d. still look good; I spent quite a lot of time and developed a mechanism of rails, gears, supports and a motor corpus that would answer all of those requirements. I made a system consisting of a gear, 2 rails, aluminium tubes and a motor box. Its centre is moved to the back of the Nema stepper which allows it to balance and not tremble. It also allows for a very smooth glide along the tubes.

ACRYLIC HOUSING

MATERIAL CHOICE At first, we were just making prototypes not thinking much about materials. But then we developed our idea further and found a restriction. If we were going to use ink or shy other liquid, then our machine should be made of waterproof or at least non-absorbing material. And it also has fires, power supplies and electricity in general. So no water should be able to reach the electrical components or it might be very dangerous. We decided to use plexiglass (acrylic glass) as it is easy to cut on the laser, it is very clean and high precision can be reached. It doesn't absorb liquids and can be easily be sealed (by hot glue, for example) to avoid any liquid getting inside the body of the machine. We also talked to a kindergarten teacher and she told us that kids would be very excited if they could see the machine's insides. So we decided no to mate it and live the walls transparently.

3D MODEL IS THE KEY to a successful joinery. I had quite an experience with finger joints for boxes during my FAD final major project and learned some tough but valuable lessons on how to work with them.

There might be numerous minor issues that will prevent them from joining if any mistakes or miscalculations were made. For example, in this case, we had problems with the laser not properly cutting the plexiglass, so when we were taking the details out of the sheet, some of them happened to have chopped edges inside the joints. And those are very tedious to clean up and it is harder to put the machine together if there were any.

ACRYLIC HOUSING

CARDBOARD TRIAL If there's one thing I learned from working with the laser - always make a trial on a cheap material or a scrap piece not to fuck up the only sheet of an expensive material you purchased for the final outcome. So before cutting the housing of our machine out of plexiglass, I made a prototype in cardboard. And only after ALL of the detail fit PERFECTLY in their respective places, only then I start cutting out of our plastic.

PUTTING THE WHOLE BODY TOGETHER

LASER CUTTING I have a broad experience in laser cutting from fabric and paper to plastic and wood.

And I have my own rules for laser cutting.

Some of them are as follows: a. always check the files several times before outputting b. always make a trial on a cheap material c. check the setting every time - the same geometry on the same settings will be ut out differently in different materials and so on.

For example, to cut out the button panel I had to cut out 67 trial holes to adjust each one perfectly.

ASSEMBLING We initially planned to put everything together using moment glue but then Mikhail told us a little trick - if mixed with baking soda. moment glue makes a nice pasta and glues plastic really well. So next day we smuggled some baking soda in school and wanted to try it out, but didn't have the time that day and accidentally took it home. So we didn't get a chance to try it this time, but we will definitely do it at some point only out of curiosity.

OUR ACCENT POINT

BUTTON PANEL!

INTERACTION AND RANDOMNESS ARE TWO KEYS FOR FUN

MY LOVE AND BABY

LOTSAÂ BUTTNS Initially, we only planned to have one button, maybe a couple. But after some trials and the interview E. Valentina Maksimovna (a kindergarten mentor and also Monica's grandma) we decided that we will add a whole bunch of different buttons and switches for kids to have fun. In childhood, adults always tell children to not touch this and not touch that, but in our project, they will be allowed to touch everything! It's gonna be so much fun! We actually arranged a meeting with the children from Valentina's kindergarten group a week after assessment to bring them the machine and let them play with it.

BUTTON PANEL we found a function for each witch on the panel and calculated just the right amount of randomness. If we would put all the functions on one button it would be too boring and not random enough. If we would put one function on each button - it would be too controllable. So we spread about 10 functions for 25 switches and buttons. This way you can have fun and approximately know what to expect from each type of switches but not knowing for sure what the result is going to be.

OR HOW I BURNED MYSELF MANY TIMES

SOLDERING Talking about soldering, we soldered our 'final', 'this one is final', 'this one is for sure final!' model several times as we were making changes or replacing some parts. Also, in the beginning, we bought really shitty wires. And then our tutor told us that the brided ones are worse than the single cord one when it comes to resistance so we better use the latter. I didn't know how 'single cord wires' are called in Russian. Neither did Angus. So he made me talk to electricians. It was scary and stressful but proved to be useful in the end. In Russian, a single cord wire is called attention - 'cel'not'yanuty provod'.

DIGITAL PART OF THE PROJECT STARTS HERE

ARDUINO CODING

CIRCUITES, BUTTONS, LEDS AND A LOT OF WIRES.

LED 3 BUTTON BRIGHTNESS

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _3 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTS OF Arduino UNO Breadboard RGB LED 3 resistors 3 pushbuttons 11 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE Two buttons on the right increase or decrease the brightness of the LED by 1 each time when pressed. The left button, if pressed, generates random colours for the LED using RGB values from 0 to 255.

SERVO POTENZIOMETER

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _5 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTS OF Arduion UNO Breadboard 1 servo motor 1 potentiometer 8 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE The Arduino board repeatedly reads the value of the potentiometer and turns the servo motor to the corresponding value remapped to its working range.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS POTENTIOMETER

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _7 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTS OF Arduino UNO Breadboard 1 potentiometer 3 LEDs 3 resistors 11 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE The value of the used potentiometer is from 0 to 1023. This gets remapped into 3 ranges. When the potentiometer is in the first range (appx from 0 to 340) the green LED lights up. Second range activates the yellow LED and the third one lights up the red LED.

DC MOTOR SPEED CHANGE

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _9 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTS OF Arduino UNO

в

Breadboar DC Motor

Тermistor 2 resistors 7 wired

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE DC motor converts direct current electrical energy into mechanical energy. It can be slower or faster but cannot be stopped - only constantly rotating.The speed of the DC Motor can be varied depending on the number at the end of the code.

LED BRIGHTNESS ON LCD SCREEN

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _11 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTSÂ OF Arduino Uno Breadboard 2 potentiometers 1 LED 2 resistors 20 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE 1 potentiometer controls the brightness of the LED, the other one controls the brightness of the LCD screen. The LCD screen reads the brightness value from the LED and translates it into a graph. The graph is displayed on the screen.

SOUND RANGE ANALYSER

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _13 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTS OF Arduino Uno Breadboard 10 LEDs 10 resistors Sound sensor (mic) 25 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE The sound sensor measures the volume of sounds around it and lights up the number of LEDs according to its range remapped and divided into 10 parts.

PERSONAL SPACE SENSOR

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _15 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTS OF Arduino Uno Breadboard 1 potentiometer 3 LEDs 3 resistors 11 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE If there's something in the range of 10cm from the sensor, it says "Very close" and lights up the red LED. If there's something in the range from 10cm to 30cm, it says "In the middle" and lights up the green LED. If there's nothing closer than 30cm, it says "far away" and lights up no LEDs.

SMALL STEPPER DRIVER

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _17 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTSÂ OF Arduino Uno Breadboard Stepper motor Driver 6 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE The stepper motor controlled by a driver goes for a particular amount of steps depending on the number in the code.

NEMA 17 GO THERE & BACK

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _19 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTSÂ OF Arduino Uno

12V battery

Breadboard

Capacitor

Nema 17 stepper motor

15 wires

A4899 stepper driver

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE The Nema 17 stepper motor is powered by a 12V battery and is controlled by an A4899 driver. The code makes it go in one direction and go back for the same number of steps in the other direction after a small delay.

STEPPER JOYSTICK

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _20 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTSÂ OF Arduino Uno

12V battery

Breadboard

Capacitor

Nema 17 stepper motor

19 wires

A4899 stepper driver

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE The Nema 17 stepper motor is powered by a 12V battery and is controlled by an A4899 driver. Arduino reads the value from X axes on the joystick (which is basically a potentiometer) and translates it for the motor to move for a number of steps. Works in both directions.

3 BUTTONS RANDOM

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _23 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTSÂ OF Arduino Uno Breadboard 3 pushbuttons 3 resistors 7 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE Each button is assigned to a range of numbers and, if pressed, generates a random number inside its respective range. Serial monitor goes from 0 to the generated number and then back to 0.

2 POTENZ 1 DIRECTION

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _25 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTSÂ OF Arduino 2 potentiometers 4 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE Two potentiometers have common ground and power supply but are connected to Arduino through separate pins.

When both of them are turned left Serial would say "left", and the same for when both of them are turned right. But when the directions do not match Serial would say "error".

12 BUTTONS MATRIX

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _27 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTSÂ OF Arduino Uno Breadboard 12 pushbuttons 29 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE The code is the same as in the circuit with three buttons.

But in this case there are 3 groups of buttons instead of three single buttons. All 12 buttons are connected into a matrix - 3 rows by 4 columns. In each row buttons are connected into one ground and one pin. Any button in the row, if pressed, closes the circuit. The three groups are assigned to the three ranges on the rail (1, 2, 3). If pressed, any button generates a random number within a range assigned to its group.

2 NEMA STEPPER MOTORS

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _29 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTS OF Arduino Uno

12V battery

Breadboard

Capacitor

2 Nema 17 stepper motor

27 wires

2 A4899 stepper drivers

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE Two NEMA 17 stepper motors are connected to one Arduino through 2 A4899 drivers. If just connected and controlled by code they work properly. But if any buttons or switches are introduced, they start contradicting one another and stop. So it is practically impossible to use one Arduino to control both of them with switches.

SLIDER SWITCH

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _31 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTS OF Arduino Uno Slider switch 3 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE The slider switch value is remapped to give values from 10 up to 100. Both sides read the same information. And the output value is going to be the same as two input values.

TOGGLE BETWEEN 2 COLOURS

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _33 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTS OF Arduino UNO Breadboard 2 LEDs 2 resistors 11 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE The toggle switch is an On-off-On 3 position switch. It toggles between 3 colours. If it is turned left, the green LED lights up; if right - the blue LED lights up. When it is in the middle, nothing happens.

3 TOGGLE SWITCHES CIRCUIT

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE CODE PAGE _35 OF THE CODEBOOK

WHAT IT CONSISTSÂ OF Arduino UNO Breadboard 3 toggle switches 1 LED 7 wires

WHAT IT WORKS LIKE All the toggles are connected in one circuit (chain). The chain only closes when app three switches are up. When the circuit is closed, the LED lights up and Serial monitor says: "Circuit is closed." Else, it says "Circuit is not closed" and the LED stays off.

SOME VITAL STATISTICS ALL THE THINGS WE SCREWED UP Dima's glue gun

2 Arduino Unos

1 stepper driver

A capacitor

3 nema drivers

3 LEDs

3 times a laser was on fire

2 CNC router bits shit ton of plexiglass

ALL SWITCHES

WE BOUGHT 6 push buttons

1 huge triangle green button

13 coloured buttons

1 joystick

3 toggle switches

1 slider switch

5 on-off switches

5 potentiometers

35 buttons in total if you are interested. And we used 23 of them.

ALL TIME THAT

WE'VE SPENT many hours of discussions 10 times of changing the final idea about 68 hours of lasering more than 100 hours of soldering almost a thousand times asking technicians for help not even nearly enough hours of sleep