Makelangelo Five Set Up Tip- Use string as insurance

[EdmondsLibrarian]

Short version: Wahoo! Received new Makelangelo Five!
Was set up quickly and able to find home right out of the box using “knob” to navigate. Impressive!
Tip: Use a loop of string as a back up to the suction cups where possible in case of falls.

Long version
I’ve used the suction cups successful on dry erase board- in fact it lasted more than 3 months once.
This time I mounted my suction cups onto “poor man’s” dry erase board which is also known as “Shower Board” at the big box stores. As a teacher, I wanted to have a dry erase board on the back of a rolling cart and this is what my budget allows. Since the cart has wheels, it seemed likely that the machine might be bumped while moving and I added a string in case of falls. The next morning, the Makelangelo was hanging by the string. That bit of string was good insurance. It’s more than likely user error (mine) since I wasn’t able to put as much pressure on the suction cups as I would have liked (so the cart didn’t tip over).
Ironically, the bit of string was from “back in the day” when Drawbot users wound string around bobbins. (machine #104) The NEW Makelangelo is truly remarkable and full credit to Dan for seeing it through. 🙂 Well done.

Next step: I thought that I might be able to put a file on the micro card either as jpg or dxf file and then select “Draw from file” on the “knob” menu but those didn’t make anything move. (It did count up by percent.) Will be hooking up computer next.

[Dan]

you’ll have to convert the image the way you used to and then save the gcode (.ngc file) to the SD card.

We’ve had suction cup models stay up for 6 months here on a window, exposed to the elements and various temperature changes. I’m glad the string worked for you! You may also want to drill a hole and screw it onto the board permanently.

[EdmondsLibrarian]

gcode is the way to go!

If you have a previous version of the program, 7.8, then you won’t want to save the generated art as these files are empty. (Corrected in 7.9) Just save your own picture.
The first file I tried was a big zig zag file, so the pen stayed up. Cross hatch file seems to work well except the pen is wobbling too much to stay in place.

Any pointers on where to wrap the pen with tape? What kind of tape?

[Dan]

about 1.5 times around the pen, on the grey part of the sharpie, just below where the cap ends.

Try a lower acceleration or a lower drawing speed. I’m looking into some kind of “automatically slower when the pen is at the bottom of a drawing”. The question is… how much slower?

[Author]

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