Writer, Maker Dad, pen plotter enthusiast, and OpenSCAD superuser MakerBlock, who we have featured before, created a handy little DIY 3-axis CNC project as part of PlotterBot, his drawbot online tutorial series.
Here’s what Erin has to say about it: “Favorite thing about this robot is that it works with techninja42’s software ‘cncserver’. Making it a great low-cost and DIY alternative to the WaterColorBot. I’ll be using it with the iPad app I wrote.”
MakerBlock’s Tiny 3-Axis CNC Drawing Robot:
This is a small DIY 3-axis CNC. It basically consists of 8 plastic parts (1 part is duplicated, so only 7 unique parts), three micro servos. You will also need 1 zip tie, 1 rubberband, and a pen of your choice.
How to Build a Tiny 3-Axis CNC Drawing Robot
The Tiny 3-Axis CNC robot is a cheap, easy to build, extremely minimalistic but very capable little robot.1 This is the assembly guide for the version 0.29 robot available for download from Thingiverse. The above picture shows the fully assembled robot. If you have ever put together a lego set or built anything from Ikea, you should be able to build the entire robot in less than 5 minutes. I’ve uploaded step-by-step photographs with each “step” organized into a short slide show of pictures.
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