ToMcat the Pen Plotter by ScribbleJ

Last crawled date: 2 years, 12 months ago

This is (another) printable pen holder for the Thing-O-Matic/Cupcake. I tried to bring at least something new to the party by stretching my artistic skills to the absolute limit for your enjoyment.
UPDATE!!! 2011-3-20:
Youtube video of first gcode print...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR3ZwVLx-xE
...would you say it's as fast as an F-14?
Youtube video of (manual) test:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEXvrOI0ZgY
I wanted a pen mount so I could draw etch resist on PCBs. The existing mounts on Thingiverse are either not for a Makerbot:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3593 Mendel Pen Holderhttp://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3526 Mendel Pen Spring Mount (oooh, springs!)
Or were using a whole servo motor in the design (for something that's sitting on the Z platform!):http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4185 Makerbot's Unicorn Penhttp://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4200 Printable Unicorn Pen
Or seemed like perfectly sane designs I should probably use but for my love of springs:http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:790 Updated Pen Plotter
So with all that considered, I set out to reinvent the wheel. I'm still at it and what I've got is somewhat roundish, so I'm sharing it now.
The "random" cat photo is one of my two cats, taken by a wonderful (and very patient!) photographer friend of mine. Her site is here: http://shutterboxing.com/
WIP WHY:
Needs redesign; too big - too tall.
Leg STL file has two right legs (so do my photos, I was anxious)
Front paws needed dremeling out to fit pen between.
Tail was a quick hack; I'd like to redo it completely.
Needs me to work with some existing pen plotting gcode generators to make them work OK. Only tests so far have been manual control, not Gcode.
As will be usual - I'll release the scad files AFTER I'm done with the STLs... I wish it weren't so as I believe strongly in release everything as early as possible, but Thingiverse stops rendering other files in a Thing after I send it an .scad. I might put it up on my github in the meantime...
UPDATE 2011-03-20:
Added a copy of the Inkscape gcode plugin by Schmarty: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5986
The copy below in the .tgz is modified to include an option for "USE SERVO" which, if set false, will cause the gcode to use Z axis movements like in my video.
UPDATE 2011-03-22:
Added photos of first PCB attempt (it says 2011-02 because I dunno what month it is)! Needs some work, but it's actually useable, so that's great for a very first try. Here's a youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaGFV45_aM