PancakeBot used GcodeCNCDemo

Miguel Valenzuela started building a pancake robot four years ago and now (right now!) his PancakeBot Kickstarter is a huge success. As of now it looks like they’ll hit 400% funded in a few hours. I asked Mr. Valenzuela a few questions about his creative process.

Code

“The code was written in two different parts. First, a majority of the code for the prototype came from MarginallyClever.com’s website on making a 3D printer with Adafruit and an Arduino Motor Shields. To send G-Code to PancakeBot, we wrote a program in Processing that allowed you to draw images and store line data and then it would create G-Code for you that it would send to the unit.”

Incremental prototyping

“It was built up in stages. The first step was to make the thing move, the second was to make the thing keep on moving. The only problem with the code is that there is a timing issue and it waits to receive data back from the Unit. This caused the hardware to stutter in-between sequences but still produces wonderful pancakes.”

There’s always room for improvement. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be a success. I understand that the retail version doesn’t have the stutter and will use new code specially written for the PancakeBot.

Final thoughts

Here’s a video of one of the first versions Miguel ever built. Look how far it’s come since then!

In my application to the Bay Area Maker Faire 2015 I asked for my table to be next to PancakeBot. That way it will be easy to find us both. Just follow the smell of maple syrup.