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An X Y plotter

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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