Another of my favorite projects at Maker Faire Bay Area this year. PancakeBot: This Drawbot Builds Objects from Batter. Project uses Adafruit Motorshields!
In the fall of 2010 Miguel Valenzuela was reading an article in Make Magazine Volume 2 named ‘Blockheads’ by Bob Parks. In the article, it talked about a British designer named Adrian Marshall who created a scale model of a Pancake Stamping Machine out of LEGO for one of his clients. Miguel told his oldest daughter Lily about the article and Lily turned to her sister and said, ‘Maia! Papa is going to build a pancake machine out of LEGO. And of course, when a 3 year old tells you to build a pancake machine out of LEGO, you better deliver. Over the next 6 months Miguel tinkered and bricked with different design concepts and eventually came up with version 1 of PancakeBot. He published it on Youtube for some friends and family to see and the video went viral, being featured in Make Magazine, Wired and PC magazine.
In the fall of 2012 Miguel and his wife Runi took PancakeBot from Norway all the way to the World Maker Faire in New York City and showed it off for the first time in public. The reaction was fantastic and it was great when parents would say that they came to the show to see PancakeBot.In the fall of 2013, Miguel began designing the New PancakeBot, a non LEGO version for those interested in going beyond MindStorms. The New PancakeBot will debuy May 17th at the Bay Area Maker Faire.
Miguel and his family currently live in Norway. Miguel continues to improve upon the design and is using PancakeBot in after school programs to teach kids about engineering, robot building and programming, oh, and of course, eating pancakes. PancakeBot was featured on the Norwegian National News NRK1 on Wednesday, December 12, 2012.
Featured Adafruit Product!
Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino v2 Kit:
The original Adafruit Motorshield kit is one of our most beloved kits, which is why we decided to make something even better. We have upgraded the shield kit to make the bestest, easiest way to drive DC and Stepper motors. This shield will make quick work of your next robotics project! We kept the ability to drive up to 4 DC motors or 2 stepper motors, but added many improvements…. (read more)
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
I had a stand next to pancake bot at Makerfaire UK last year.
The tastiest place to be at the whole event.
Event though I was running a home build CNC engraver I think I managed to keep the dust levels under control so people didn’t end up with acrylic pancakes 🙂