Lego A4 Plotter

[@jheckerman]

in addition to being a sweet build, the art you picked is quite cool in this format

[@theofficialczex1708]

Impressive detail for LEGO! I imagine that backlash is a major issue here.

[@kevinruan]

yeah plastic can only be plastic...

[@theofficialczex1708]

@@kevinruan You can achieve impressive rigidity with plastic parts. The issue with LEGO is that it's designed to be disassembled by hand, so there are increased clearances between parts.

[@ord_lego]

Thank you. It is... and I try to program it out (current backlash compensation is 0.4mm in the long axis and 1.8mm in the short axis)

[@JohnDlugosz]

@@theofficialczex1708 I wonder if that can be overcome by using some reversible "thread locker" compound to tighten the joints. Essentially glue together but spray with water to take apart again?

[@bbqotpewi]

@@JohnDlugosz I don't think that glue will help. Backlash in machines like these is usually reduced by constantly pulling the moving parts in one direction with a spring or rubber band. That creates a small but constant pressure on the gears and chain links.

[@danatassler8776]

I worked at a company years ago which used HP plotters. I'm STILL in awe of what those things could draw!

[@aldernero3376]

I'm honored that you picked one of my designs to plot!

[@ord_lego]

Thank you! It's a great design :D

[@user-hd2fj6oz3s]

You're a genius !!, this is such a construction from the list.

[@MarinusMakesStuff]

Super cool, I've built three plotters so far and it's a fantastic hobby so I can relate. I really like the pen lifting mechanism!

[@ord_lego]

Thanks Marinus! I follow your channel and instagram and tbh it was probably you who inspired me to create this. Love your work!

[@MarinusMakesStuff]

@@ord_lego Haha, oh my god, that is great to hear! Happy to have probably helped :) I'll start posting some new gems soon!

[@ord_lego]

Haha 👍 👍 Great, looking forward to it!

[@constantinosschinas4503]

You may laugh but the neatest mech part of all this is the Z axis, imo. It has this fishing rod look, it is like a crane, seems unecessary, though it functions so simply and great, first transfering the cyclic motion upwards, then extending it, as if it controls all the machine's movement and finally as a lifting cam. Just a great, happy machine!

[@name.is.myname]

It feels like the z axis is controlled by the belt inside the arm of the x axis. The fishing rod mechanism looks like a control for the pen drawing

[@ThinkCleverAndSmart]

So simple yet so complicated. I love it!

[@maoravni4203]

This should be a set of its own!

[@Duraltia]

Brings back memories from owning a *_LEGO_*_ 8094 TECHNIC Control Center..._ Good times... =)

[@samuels1123]

Advice: To reduce slowly drifting out of alignment, allow the pen/marker to freely rest on the paper, then when the signal is sent to the item, pick it up with force, this should ensure that friction between the writing cart and the paper is minimal, but it may also present further issues such as inertia causing the pen to go too far after movement is supposed to end, I believe this could be fixed then by immediately picking up the pen and then stopping To solve drift the hard way you could take an approach with worm gears or sensors 'when at this point, rotate motor B clockwise until sensor B has detected the orange dot on the gear has passed by 5 times' to say 'move 5 rotations this way'

[@Pickelhaube808]

The weird inaccuracies make it better looking and more interesting

[@winandd8649]

The pen lifting mechanism is very clever!

[@guigonj5629]

really Nice transmission concept !

[@theinventor838]

Wish I could buy this as a kit.

[@kugliemuglie]

A kit would be awesome!!

[@citrusjuicebox]

Way better design than the one that came in the manual for the old Mindstorms sets.

[@zippysqrl]

Looks like it has a bit of drift, should have it recalibrate occasionally.

[@kelvin1316]

This so needs to be a kit!

[@kugliemuglie]

A kit would be awesome!!

[@theorphanobliterator]

I am a new sub, rlly think it would be pretty cool if u could implement mechanical logic to build a simple computer. Or not simple, who knows. But with your prowess, I think it would be super cool to see what u come up with. (Also, you would be the first to do it to my knowledge) keep up the good work

[@samuels1123]

I wonder if those weird rotation actuator piston things from the bucket wheel excavator could help

[@jdbrickcreation]

Very impressive, but the program to make the drawings must have taken many time. the mechanism is also awesome. Good work 👍

[@satibel]

Depends, it might just be a program that follows move to x-y and move the pen up instructions, and then you can use an existing program to draw the pictures. Not saying that it's not impressive, just that the program might be easier than you might think

[@jdbrickcreation]

Okay thank you, personally, I use mindstorm so I don't know if the programming works the same as this box that I've never used. And I'm not sure if you can copy programs. but if possible that would be cool

[@satibel]

@@jdbrickcreation I think you can program on pc, so if I had to do it I think I would either make a program that take a series of x,y coordinates and the status of the pen (up or down) and just move between them. You can generate the list with any plotting software. I'm not sure how the new one work either, last I've used was the RCX back in 2006 or 2007, so it's a far memory, but it was programmed on a computer. But I'd wager you could make the program in like a day without much trouble with some knowledge of how cartesian platforms work.

[@jdbrickcreation]

Ok thank you, I would try to find out how to do more complex programming on a computer, especially to do this kind of programming. because I doubt that the "programming" application, I believe it is called for mindstorm that I use initially, is complex enough to achieve this

[@FlutterBug]

@@jdbrickcreation this is also mindstorms actually! the newest version, which came out fairly recently

[@Koi749-z8k]

Круто! Видео очень крутое реально, у лего столько возможностей😉

[@BirdTho]

Very good - you need to eliminate chain bounce by pretensioning to eliminate a lot of the wobbles in the lines.

[@zhahoo797]

I think the wobbles look good :)

[@PhilmoreJenkins]

Can't wait to see lego cnc's and laser cutters

[@andrewcraig1074]

Neat.

[@eformance]

And when you're done plotting, press another button and you have a battle tank that can write burns about the enemy!

[@DanielLenskiy]

Just awesome!

[@blockpartyrobotleague]

Take this to a Lego con, let visitors request their own artwork on it for a couple of dollars each, and I guarantee by the end of the weekend you'll probably have enough money to build a second plotter. :P

[@donnachaslegocreations]

So cool

[@alextutusaus]

You could open-source the hardware part and charge per license on the program running it! I'd gladly but it!

[@frombrum]

much better than my efforts

[@Jkauppa]

so you made a matrix printer, too

[@Pythonister695]

Really cool! Is the code and model published anywhere? I would love to build this!

[@ord_lego]

Thanks! The code is here and some more details. I don't think I ever uploaded the model... www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/186820-wip-mindstorms-51515-plotter/

[@Pythonister695]

@@ord_lego Thank you! I’ll attempt to recreate the model from the video.

[@TheD3adlysin]

You are a single step away from a lego 3d printer.

[@kerbalsomething2673]

Wow. Just. Wow

[@jaysonsbricks]

‼good job boy.‼

[@nadoalaily]

is it available to share this amazing building instructions

[@moogthedog2816]

Please tell me the full length videos are available somewhere... This stuff is like ASMR to me.

[@blackhawk1484]

I would be really interested in the source code. 😀

[@davidjohnston4210]

Super cool design. I've been working on a Lego plotter of my own for the last few weeks in my free time. Looking at your design running it looks like everything is being plotted and drawn in a single program. I've been trying to get mine to work, but I keep getting a memory overflow error and I don't know how to fix it. If you see this could you give me a clue as to how your getting the image plotted and drawn without using up too much memory.

[@ord_lego]

The biggest thing to reduce memory use was to store move coordinates as integers rather than floats. Integers take up a lot less room. Second biggest was using less detailed drawings. Anything with over ~10,000 moves will need more than one program for me.

[@katzmikehd]

How do you made the program??

[@dragonshadow1902]

Next.. a 3d printer made of Lego printing new Lego pieces.

[@christopherneufelt8971]

Can you stop trolling us with OUR incompetence Mr Ord? How many more suicided engineers would you like to see in your channel? Don't you have enough?

[@ayeshakan4945]

give the peices and instructions for it please

[@TheGreatSteve]

I thought at first it was going to drive over the paper.

[@TheXeneco]

Wow. How long did this take to design & build. Very nice :)

[@ord_lego]

Thanks. About 6 months, on and off. I had to rebuild it many times

[@quanthe4th]

This is incredible! the fact that you where able to program such thing is incredible, btw I’m make a printer out of lego and I’m using also pybrick coding method for lego boost so I was gonna ask if you had any tips for me as I code so I don’t horribly mess the code up and another question is, do you upload a pic of what you want it to draw or like how is it?

[@ord_lego]

Thank you. Please see this thread; it has far more information than I could write here: www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/186820-wip-mindstorms-51515-plotter/ All the best with your printer!

[@igniuss]

This is insanely impressive! What does the software side of things look like? Do you just send it GCode and translate it?♥️

[@ord_lego]

Thanks! Kind of... The code is created from SVG files, which I convert to python code. So rather than 'G01 X123 Y789' it would be 'move(123,789)'

[@igniuss]

@@ord_lego Ah cool! That makes sense 😎 thanks for the reply!🙌

[@The_Brick_Zone]

Im guessing you programmed it with pybricks, could you send me the code? I’m trying to build something similar but I don’t have that much experience with python.

[@robot797]

I wonder why there arent any lego 3d printers

[@roku-chan]

Hey, I think this thing’s plotting something 👀

[@l000kin]

Impressive, but compare it to Merkur Alfi Plotter which was made in 1988 in former Czechoslowakia (Merkur was a toy like Meccano). It uses much fewer components, it was (and it is) much cheaper, but the result is incomparably better and accurate. Lego Mindstorms is really bad choice for engineerings projects...

[@embryocean]

Should have made it a LEGO pen/pencil. Lol

[@imtheone9698]

You should make a 3d printer out of lego!

[@gnome3027]

wow

[@tiagotiagot]

For the backlash situation, what if you pre-tension the mechanism, so it's always pushing towards one side of the backlash? (posting this as a separate comment instead of a reply cause I dunno if you get notified when someone replies to a reply; saw another youtuber complain about such an issue)

[@ord_lego]

How would you do it? A giant spring? I tried to do it with a weight hanging from a pulley but it became too complicated and was putting constant strain on the motor... (that's right about the comments and I sometimes miss replies because of it, unfortunately)

[@tiagotiagot]

@@ord_lego Hm, maybe a string rolled around a pulley, with the pulley geared to a lever so that the lever doesn't move much, and the tip of the lever is attached to something like a constant tension spring? How much force do the parts pull away from touching one side of the backlash?

[@ord_lego]

That could work... Anyway, the chains are all tensioned and I decided not to complicate it further. For higher accuracy, I think a redesign with shorter drive trains would be best. I was going for high speed with this design by mounting the motors remotely.

[@nathandumont5289]

instruction?

[@bepeplia5086]

When lego is more complex than your mom

[@pauserratgutierrez]

Are you selling instructions?

[@06racing]

How does the software work? Is it just tracing an outline of an image? Or is it going point to point?

[@ord_lego]

Point to point - it's kind of like G-code

[@Xiefux]

if it would print text it would be way cheaper than any printer

[@darkphoenix0808]

Make it draw a box and text that says I am not a robot, and the have it check it

[@GyroCoder]

....woah Are you a mechanical engineer in your day job, by any chance?

[@ord_lego]

I am :)

[@colin_curtin]

3d printer without the 3d

[@alextutusaus]

Submit it to Lego Ideas please! 😝

[@fisch37]

I can't imagine how terrible it was to write the drawing code for this

[@davidnestoroski4694]

Noice but how did you coded ti am trying it 3 weeks and i cant do it

[@theoriginal639]

Draw more stuf dude actually draw hundres of stuff and make a hour long time laps vid

[@kugliemuglie]

Yes please!!!

[@kirby317]

Now do a 3d printer

[@shottysteve]

my loins are moist

[@Pickelhaube808]

they better be

[@chasejones5923]

Just buy a printer🤦‍♂️

[@Legostudio987]

Cool