robotic handwriting machine

[little-c]

Im thinking about building a robot arm to write stuff, ie type on keyboard, and get letters written onto the paper.

Im thinking two elbow joints, and a horrizontal pen lifter mech(pen on paper, pen off paper)
or
gantry type mech, with pen lifter.

which would be easier to build? coding is kinda a no brainer for a code and math junkie. building an arm to cover an A4 or A3 sheet of paper is the hard part.

this is the ideas part, Im basicly looking for holes in plan stuff, or blatantly obvious why don't you do this stuff.

I will have formed a plan in a few days, It will be nice if it took into account me and my happy go lucky attitude to safety...

[SmAsH]

Have you thought about a cnc type thing with a pen where the cutting bit is?

[Soeren]

Hi,

Im basicly looking for holes in plan stuff, or blatantly obvious why don't you do this stuff.

I will have formed a plan in a few days, It will be nice if it took into account me and my happy go lucky attitude to safety...

Why don't you... Use a printer?

Got the "why don't you" and even the worst attitude would have to get creative to get damaged by a printer (short of dropping it on your feet) and as the Loaf sings "2 out of 3 ain't bad".

And for a third tip... See if you can find an old plotter - it's pretty much what you wanna do, only in a more efficient way (re. movement).

[Razor Concepts]

Printer may not look like ink from a pen

Are you trying to make an automatic document forging machine?? 

[SmAsH]

Could you not take the printing part out of the printer and put a pen when it was and use the ready made x and y axis setup?

[little-c]

maybe I should have made it slightly clearer, Im going for the it looks cool approach. the main aim of this is to look cool at a freshers fair/grant meeting

as for use a printer... I allready apropriated the guts of the two I had for other uses.






its not for forging documents.... damn. why did you have to give me ideas?

[arixrobotics]

hey i've done something like this before!

mine uses 3 servos and a whiteboard instead of paper. writing on whiteboard with marker pen is easier for the robot since there is less friction.

this was one of my first uC-powered robots, and it has no intelligence what so ever. i had to manually program into it every stroke for each letter. and as you can see, the 'hand-writing' is really bad!

but it was a real crowd pleaser. if you want a it-looks-cool-but-actually-is-useless robot, then go for it! 

[Adapt]

hmm...vinyl cutter?

[little-c]

I ahve ended up with a boom running in the x direction on two sets of twin rails. and shuttle that moves along the boom. a linear actuator of some discription will move the pen on and off the paper.

its moved by a giant band (glued/screwed/bolted) to the boom, and another on the shuttle. probably run by one of the many stepper motors I have.

position feedback will ether be encoders or potential dividers.

[Euphy]

You have probably already seen this industrial robot doing some handwriting: http://www.robotlab.de/bios/bible_engl.htm

[little-c]

I need less projects! yikes. I forgot about this one. wonder if Ill ever have the spare time to build it? recon the plans are somewhere in all my paperwork.