New experiments with Makelangelo 3
Makelangelo 3 robots ship fully assembled and tested by us, and as part of the quality guarantee I’ve been drawing a lot of pictures. I’ve also been experimenting with ways to improve the machine. These are experimental ideas that may make it into the next model.
Pen holder
The most obvious is a pen holder with less wiggle, seen in the top right of this picture. The arms of the holder can swing so that the line down each belt always goes right through the pen holder. This is based on a thingiverse design by Carlo Franciscone. I changed it all to laser cut parts for faster manufacturing, and because customers requested a clear pen holder.
Improved homing
The next is a better way to home the machine. I lie awake at night thinking about how to get perfect results every time, and one of the ideas that lasted until morning was a better homing position. Under the center of a drawing makes restarts nearly impossible. Top center seemed like a good place to try again. To home the machine, line up the circle with the pen holder, and click “set home”. Done! I’m thinking I’ll include this test drawing in the kit, so you know your machine can draw this good.
Greater resilience
Speaking of restarts, this owl drawing had to restart twice because the cable to the pen holder caught on the pen holder. I was able to restart it because (a) I could still see the circle and (b) I could use the “start at” command in the Makelangelo Software to resume the drawing from where I stopped. Try that with a 3D printer.
Down the rabbit hole
There are more improvements to show, but they’ll have to wait for next week’s post. Meanwhile, follow us on Instagram to see new stuff every day.
