This XY
plotter was made by the group at Next Window and is the
work of Paul Marson and Keith Colson, for the purposes of
calibrating touch screens.
It uses components that were salvaged from two
old Kodak flatbed scanners.
Belts, motors, driver
boards and the stepper motors themselves are what is used
for this machine and gives a resolution of 16 micrometers
per step, far better accuracy that what is actually
needed.
From this angle you can see the detail that has gone
into the Y axis drive train.
It utilizes the same
enclosed bearings that you would find in roller skates,
and are set to 60 degrees.
Thus allowing for good stability while running up and
down on a tube of aluminium.
Feeling rather pleased with himself, Paul presents
the finished hardware, ready for the cables and software.
Here the plotter sits for a few moments while Keith
makes the cables and affixes the dual stepper motor
driver boards to the Y train housing.
Keith wrote the
PC software under VB with a test pattern of a spiral.
The embedded part was a Silabs 8051 to clock the
stepper motors and control the motor current.
Not only did it work, but to everyone's astonishment,
it worked first time.
The final assembly of
the robot is complete an runs very smoothly.
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