4xiDraw: homemade pen plotter on the Arduino

Pen and pencil-pen plotters were once extremely popular. Over time, their production began to decline. But such systems can be used in various fields, including cutting and sewing, engineering, drawing, etc. You can find a pen plotter on the market, but it's more interesting to make it yourself, right?

And a user named Miguel Sanchez decided to make a plotter on his own. As a control platform, he chose the Arduino Uno. The system also uses NEMA 17 stepper motors and an auxiliary servo drive to raise and lower the handle.

In addition, metal tubes, belts and several parts printed on a 3D printer are used. This whole system is quite simple, and with a 3D printer, it is not particularly difficult to make it. Interestingly, Miguel initially decided to use laser cutting to create the necessary parts, but afterwards he decided to work with a 3D printer.

Sanchez decided to create his own plotter, inspired by the model AxiDraw, which was developed by Evil Mad Scientist .



Here is the first model of the plotter, created from parts cut by a laser:



After the developer decided to modify the system, and also use a 3D printer to create parts for his plotter.



All models needed for printing parts posted by the user in the general access .

In order to send files to "print", the craftsman used the Universal Serial Sender program . This is a java-program that perfectly copes with its task. And here is the final result of the work:



More details about the project tells the author himself on his website .