In this project, I used an old 3d printer control board together with recycled DVD player drive gears to build a CNC machine that writes on a sheet of paper.
The project took much longer than at first anticipated due to several other projects and summer holidays. In the end the writer works as intended. As I was assuming the most complicated part of the whole process is the print file preparation. I found a few possibilities on how to turn an image into a printable file, however the size was always an issue and the end result could have been better. The usable print area is only 38 x 38 x 35 mm. The Z-axis is not very important as it is used only to lift the pen. The pen uses only gravity to press on the paper, thus ballpoint pens would not work. The whole construction is stable enough for the writing purpose. Nevertheless, for a CNC maschine or a 3d printer the Y-axis must be reinforced. The paper fixing method should be improved, as I used a piece of tape to fix it properly.
All in all, the project turned out well.
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