ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

The Seshan Brothers have done it again, this time they created a Xmas Edition of their famous PIX3L PLOTT3R printer.   That's the Seshan Brothers in minifig form ;) Not only does this version prints a selection of different holiday greeting cards it is also designed in festive colours,  using red and green LEGO elements from different sets combined with their EV3 sets.  Holiday Card Plott3r Automates Holiday Cards Another really cool thing, don't know if you noticed, is that even the markers are LEGO! Check them out on shop at home  https://shop.lego.com/en-US/LEGO-MARKER-9-PK-5005147 Close up of the LEGO Markers The project even ended up on the LEGO Group's Youtube channel. Check it out!! If you want to learn more about the technology behind this project head over to the Seshan Brother's GitHub directory front page   http://www.beyondtheinstructions.com/projects/ where you can find EV3 programs and much more. Al...

NXT based printers seem to be popular, and here is another great example from Yorm to add to the mix. The LabyPrinter works on a x-y gantry system, with a touch sensor mounted on the z-axis to know when the pen is touching the paper.  It is programmed in RobotC, and capable capable of printing an image 150 pixels x 150 pixels. The nice part of Yorms setup, is the software he wrote to create the sequence of RobotC commands needed to create the points of the image.  It takes a black and white image, turns it into a 150 x 150 pixel representation, with 1's and 0's.  It then converts those into x,y,z commands for the printer to work. As an additional bonus, the printer can be used in manual mode, with a game controller moving the pen around :)

Nice NXT based printer from Leon Overweel. Leon creates a design by first loading up an image on computer, converting it to black and white and then into 1's and 0's.  That array is then copied into a RobotC script that puts down the pen for the 1's and lifts the pen for the 0's as it scans along.  Nice and smooth, and great resolution of 50px by 50 px. Leon has a comprehensive post with all the fine details. http://worldofmindstorms.com/2012/02/24/prinxt-mindstorms-nxt-printer/ (Thanks to Joey Kelly for pointing me to it!)

Check out this amazing plotter that pokes tiny pin holes in paper. The creator says that can 'print' 1.3 pin holes every 1 mm. Other Specifications: printable area: 91×70mm (3.6"x2.7") maximum resolution: 1.3 holes/mm (33 dpi), using a 0.3mm needle time to print a bitmap of about 1,500 holes: some 35-40 minutes materials: only LEGO parts (one NXT brick, three NXT motors, three NXT touch-sensors, lots of Technic bricks) except the needle software: 14k of NXC commented source "printable" media: 105mm-wide paper sheets (best results using 80-100g/mq paper), plastic sheets (not too thick), kitchen "aluminium sheets"... NXT brick batteries: 6× 1.2V NiMH AA batteries (rated "2300mAh") allow 100 to 150 minutes printing Full details at his website: http://www.alfonsomartone.itb.it/naxntb.html -- Damien Kee

Gives new meaning to the term, "dot matrix".