New build

I fancied making my own VPIP based V plotter – and made some very minor alterations to the cad data (plastic parts) in the process.

Just some of the parts required to build the thing – dog optional.

The plastic parts for the build. Printed on my Mini Kossel in el cheapo blue via amazon @0.2mm layer height.

The first job was to deburr the parts that required it – note the colour change depending on light conditions! The below image is a truer representation of the actual parts.

Bashing the pulley thingies onto the motor shafts

Followed by mounting the motors.

And what is potentially the coolest part of the project (IMHO) is a swappable thing that allows for the pen nib to be stabilised. I have a couple of these with different diameter holes for the different sized pen nibs, eg a sharpie. This should keep the pen at 90 degrees to the paper and not move around inside the gondola. It just needs a deburr in the below image.

And as usual, I got carried away building the thing to carry on taking photos…

Firstly I extended the mounting brackets for the motors – this will allow me to position the endstop encoders later down the line.

These are v1 of the endstop thingies – they will protrude fromt eh front of the machine, but its really the only way I could get it to work ATM. It has Z adjustment with the M3 screw and two captive nuts, and Y adjustment of up to 10mm – having not used these before – hopefully this will give plenty of adjustment to the ball string on the machines.

I reduced the diameter of the gondola so it would print on my mini Kossel (160mm). I also added another screw mounting to hold all the components together.

I added a spacing for the bearing housing  – allowing the shaft to move freely as it was being constrained by the enclosed design, as you can see from the lovely image below  – grey bits are the recess!

The weights now have their own printed mounting – V1 worked with a little filing, so V2 I’ll try and fix that!

I finally got around to building the new Hat for the Pi, but that has a few teething problems at the mo – so currently its not moving.

This also has its own electronics mount – but I forgot about the SD reader at the bottom of the Pi, so I had to hack away at it a bit! I aim to make a cover for the electronics at a later date.

I added cable sleeve and that makes it look that little bit better – but the cheap DuPont connectors are utter crap and just pull apart without any prompting >:(.

So, hopefully the config for the UART will get sorted reasonably soon, so I can start drawing with this damn thing! Its been a fun build though, I hope the work on the plastic parts can result in some high res / fast drawings to be created – speaking of which, better get cracking with that!

Some of the beginnings of the drawings…