Datagraph polar1/7/2024 ![]() Well, I’m glad you asked! A PolargraphSD is the drawing machine I use myself, and am selling in batches. The whole system is fairly technologically agnostic, I have written an instructable that shows how to put one together based on an Arduino microcontroller and an Adafruit Motorshield, along with a couple of stepper motors. It’s not the most accurate plotter in the world, but it was good enough for Wes Nijssen to draw out a giant papercraft polarbear with. You can also use it for plain plotter-type drawings, because it reads drawings in as SVG vector art files. The hardware requests each pixel in turn, and renders it on the page using it’s own shading and movement algorithms. It decodes a bitmap and creates a map of the file using a polar coordinates system, recording pixel position, size and brightness. The application that drives it from the computer is written in Processing. And draftsmen will recognise this as a primitive, gravity assisted pen plotter. The mechanism is not wholly original: I have mainly taken inspiration from Hektor the spraycan robot, but in researching my machine came across prior art in the form of the AS200 drawbot and Harvey Moon’s drawing machine. The name “Polargraph” remains as an evocative term, but it isn’t accurate. ![]() The angle of each cord is controlled by the length of both cords, rather than by specifying angle and distance as in with a true polar coordinate. In fact, it doesn’t use a polar system at all, it’s actually a kind of double-triangulation coordinate system. It’s called a polargraph because when I was making it, I thought of it as using a dual-polar coordinates system internally, rather than the regular cartesian system we (and computer systems) tend to use. Polargraph / slow drawing show preview from Sandy Noble on Vimeo. It is only just good enough to get the job done, and in keeping with this technical brevity, I’m going to spare you more explanations about how it works: The pictures tell the story better. The machine is a simple device, that draws picture using a normal pen, some motors and some string. Polargraph? Polarshield? PolargraphSD? Huh?Ī Polargraph is what I decided to call this drawing machine that I made, but it also describes the output.
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