Pen Plotter

I have been planning this machine over the last couple of months. Finally there was some time to actually build some parts. So far the pen holder and parts of the frame are finished as you can see in the pictures attached.

The parts needed to attach the X-Axis to the rest of the frame still need to be made, as well as the rears corners.

There has been hardly any work on the controller / software side of things. Current thinking is to self implement non-grbl logic on an Arduino Uno R4 Wifi controlling the stepper motors through an Arduino CNC shield. The Arduino R4 would receive commands though bluetooth either directly from a laptop or alternatively from a second device with touchscreen, also over bluetooth.

There still is a lot of work to be done before the first completed drawing, but i think the general idea and level of implementation starts to become visible.

Will post updates here as they keep coming.

UPDATE 04.01.2025:

The printer frame is now finished and everything seems to be working well. There was a very slight racking issue on one of the Y-Axis rails, which seem to be gone after the timing belts were added.

I have started writing code using Timers on Arduino R4, which appears to allow driving the motors at frequencies up to and maybe even over 4800hz. A very simple circle drawing POC looks good, but there still is lots of work ahead with movement planning and G-code parsing still missing.

Overall I am quite happy with the way things are working out pretty much right away, having been stuck in projects where substantial parts had to be refactored in the past.

Cheers, Hannes