Hi all,
Recently solicited to take part to this cnc community, I would like to show you the machine I built. It is basically a router with a rotating head and four brush-tipped syringes that are lowered by a Z-axis. Please see attached pictures and follow the link below to see a short video of the machine at work:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5511171520068752007&pr=goog-sl

I will appreciate any comment/suggestion ...
Thank you.
Andreas

Fantastic creation :thumbsup: Great music on the video too! (way better than router noise lol) I liked it matey.

That's very impressive! Is the rotating head commercial or did you design and build this yourself?

RipperSoftware

I personally devised and built the painting head mostly by trial and error. To change any of the four colors I just give the right angular G-code to the step motor and it turns 90/180/270/360 degrees, then to make the syringe go down I give an M3 command to the motor pushing the piston low. Consider that control and timing is accomplished with a microprocessor. See picture for more details.
The whole thing is still work in progress and improvements are on the way.
I want to get to the point of selling my art work.

Thats a CRAZY and COOL creation!!!! I like it!!! :D

What kind of inches per minute was it running at in the video? Looked very fast.

The video was accelerated at times, but the machine paints at 2500mm/min(about 100 inches/min) and does rapids at 7500mm/min. I tried to make it paint faster but it gets too jerky and the painting loses fidelity.

This reminds me of the crazy wheel driven gantry with a spray gun someone started to build. I don't remember who though...

--S

This reminds me of the crazy wheel driven gantry with a spray gun someone started to build. I don't remember who though...

--S

I think it was VacPress?


http://www.cnczone.com/gallery/data/500/medium/3104pntrgantry.jpg



http://www.cnczone.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/430/cat/500/ppuser/3104


.

andreas2,

Good job on your machine.

I thought about doing something like you have. :)

Keep up the good work!



.

For everyone who has produced a product, alot of others will have roughly the same idea. I described this to my wife last month while we were working on some business ideas.

Good job!

RipperSoftware

I think it was VacPress?


http://www.cnczone.com/gallery/data/500/medium/3104pntrgantry.jpg



http://www.cnczone.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/430/cat/500/ppuser/3104


.


True. :)

Thank you Switcher and Svenakela!
Interesting what you found... I imagine the fun of having a machine like the one of VacPress (with my painting head instead) moving around my studio doing art on the floor!

I like the movie clip. Nice "tool" change!

Fantastic
Skip

Hi Skip,

Thanks for your appreciation. I am building a new painting machine that works vertically on a wall, so it will be larger (about 70" by 80") and more fit for art exhibitions. When it is ready I will notify this community with photos and videos.
Cheers!
Andreas2

hooray!

nice something interesting to see

What kind of painting tips on the extruders do you use? and how do you keep it flowing continuously?

I use the synthetic hair of paint brushes and the color is slowly but continuously sqeezed down from the syringe by the piston and motor+screw (see the picture of the painting head).
Hey, do you want to build another painting machine?

Yeah I think I might... I'm wondering if you could do electric sheep with them...check it out pretty cool stuff (http://electricsheep.org/)

Oh yes, that kind of repetitious drawings can be done very easily with my machine, a cad program and some personal creativity.

Well Electric sheep are just "Computer dreams" its what happens (if you load the program) when you computer goes to idle mode it creates random figures and then they give birth to more complex children and i was wondering if i could just walk away and let my computer paint them instead of making a bitmap of them. would be really sick.

andreas - do you have a website or somewhere to see your work?

somewhere ive got a Qbasic program i wrote based off of... i think it was called 'stepper.bas', and it loaded a dxf and did cnc type motion control.. i added a bunch of features that i needed, particularly the 'RIP folder' idea - which is just that the software watches a folder, and if a new file arrives. it draws it..

vacpress,
what you describe is very interesting. Could I try your program?
If you want to read the short history of my machine go to
http://www.townzs.com/?t=post/697
and from there follow the link to my web site (www.andreaspinelli.com). Sorry it is in Italian but you can still watch my paintings.

let me try and hunt it down! i really hope i can find it as i spent hours on it!

it has one bug - i will only load the DXF that came with the 'stepper.bas' that i started with, however, the DXF looked fine, and i think it was a matter of output settings in illustrator to get it to work, or a modification to the dxf parser in the QBASIC program, which was actually pretty simple to understand, i just ran out of money and time for the project that was meant for.

while i am looking for the file, you can find stepper.bas at luberth's website.. i canot recall the exact info, luberth.com? luberth.net? search for 'luberth', he is here somewhere and on the inernet.

and, Wow! your paintings are great. i really like them! i cant imagine the painting machine helped make those though. very nice. where do you live in italy? ive been several times and worked in bolzano for awhile.

i am glad you like my work even though that is all hand made. Thank you for your useful information on Luberth's website and in case you find anything for me let me know.By the way, i live in Florence.