Small machines, built on the bench.
3D printing, electronics and common parts, turned into things that move, light up and draw. Every build, the dead ends included, is in my notebook.
More from my notebook
All entries →
An Ideas board that turns like a page
Result. Bench now has an Ideas board: a page of sticky notes next to my projects, one click away. Getting to it smoothly took four tries. The version that works doesn't fly the canvas across to the notes at all: it…
Making the canvas match the rig
Result. The Pen Plotter on Bench's canvas is now laid out the way it's really built on my studio rig, with every wire going through the same little "hub" breadboard as the real thing. The circuit came out provably…
A geared pen lift, and a proper plotter screen
Result. The pen plotter is working extremely well. It took three pen-lift designs to get there. The one that works lifts the pen with a rack and pinion like the X and Y axes, and lets the pen rest on the paper by its…
Round circles: taking up the backlash
Result. Small circles used to come out as rounded squares. The plotter now takes up the play in its gears every time an axis reverses. After three test drawings, X 0.9 mm, Y 0.8 mm makes the circles round. The values…
A cat face, start to finish
Result. The plotter drew a cat-face emoji from an SVG: 451 mm of line, with round eyes, a clean nose and whiskers. Then it moved the pen out of the way and lifted it so the sheet came straight out. Its screen…
The pen plotter draws its first picture
The pen plotter is built, wired and drawing. Its first picture is a "hypnotic H" for Hypnochip: the H's outline in five rings 1.3 mm apart, one continuous line, about 100 seconds.
Projects
All machines →
Experiments
Bring-ups and test rigs →
Asteroid Test
WorkingA tiny Spacecavator-style digger on a Nextion screen: steer through rock and collect gems with a joystick, zoom with a knob.
Servo Tester
WorkingFind a hobby servo's real end points and centre: a PCA9685 driver, three knobs and a display, all run by an ESP32.
Stepper Test
WorkingA 28BYJ-48 stepper driven through the PCA9685 and a ULN2003: milestone one of the pen plotter.
Bench
Every machine here starts in Bench, our own workbench app. One project file gives you the breadboard, schematic, perfboard, 3D model and the firmware sketch, with a live circuit solver and one-click flashing to a real ESP32.
