
Cartesio – Low-cost Cartesian plotter robot - satchet
https://robottini.altervista.org/cartesio-low-cost-cartesian-plotter-robot
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errantspark
I don't understand the decision not to use CoreXY. I have a very very similar
plotter that also cost me next to nothing using essentially the same BoM as
this. It's directly descended from this one [0]. It can absolutely fly, I've
spent some time tweaking it but I can reliably and accurately drive it at
something like 20cm/s. That's largely a factor of the low inertia of the
CoreXY design, which keeps both the main steppers stationary during operation.

Anyway, plotters are dope and to anyone thinking of building one of these, I
highly recommend a CoreXY based design.

[0]
[https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1514145](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1514145)

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edge17
Not sure if this is a dumb question, but what is CoreXY?

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grzm
[https://corexy.com](https://corexy.com)

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salgernon
Plotters are addictive and lovely - look for #plottertwitter on twitter.

I've always loved this spray painting printer (poor quality video,
unfortunately):

< [https://youtu.be/V4aXw0Zotzw](https://youtu.be/V4aXw0Zotzw) >

The people that made AxiDraw also helped put together a kid's kickstarter
plotter "Sylvia's Watercolor Bot" which is fun. They also have a plotter that
draws on eggs...

I don't have an AxiDraw, but I'd be willing to bet the differentiator from
homebuilt is the rigidity of the platform and being able to get very
consistent results. (Personally, I'm a fan of 80s pen plotters from HP and
Rolond.)

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romwell
FYI, if you already have a 3D printer, you can totally use it as a 2D plotter
(if that's not obvious).

And you can totally use a fountain pen if you feel like it.

In action:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/BlQHk43gwra/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BlQHk43gwra/)

Final result:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/BlJHawZgFi1/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BlJHawZgFi1/)

Same, with a ballpoint:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/BlJ8dgmAaTA/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BlJ8dgmAaTA/)

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StavrosK
How do I do this? Installing the pen and adding some initial gcode to raise
the Z axis above the bed so the nozzle doesn't touch isn't a problem, but what
generates the drawing gcode?

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romwell
I wrote code that generated this particular G-code for the Dragon curve.

In general, there's software to convert PostScript or DXF to G-code (used with
e. g. engraving machines).

The G code to move in XY is simple enough (G0 x y) that you could write a
converter yourself.

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StavrosK
G code is simple, I'm just not sure how simple reading the curves would be. I
worked around this by exporting as a png and having Cura slice that, then
writing a script to extract a single layer. It works beautifully, now I want
to see if I can make PCBs with it, it would be a revolution.

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mrfusion
Is there a practical use for this? I’m thinking if my 3d printer does I could
repurpose it for this.

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hugs
I've spent the last several years working with this scale of robot at my
start-up. The practical use is mobile phone, tablet, and general touchscreen
testing. In some products, such as automotive head unit displays or any
medical device with a touchscreen, there are legal and company policy rules
requiring that functional testing of a device must match human actions as
closely as possible. Which means you can't _only_ test the device through USB
or some other back-end developer interface. In other cases,
performance/latency testing teams want to test a touchscreen device as a black
box, meaning with no extra instrumentation running on the device-under-test,
to get good real world performance data. In all these cases that means a
capacitive tablet stylus, instead of a pen, is attached to the end of a robot
like Cartesio.

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vosper
Huh, that's really interesting to learn. I'll file it in my big file of "Never
thought about it, but makes sense"

(sorry, nothing otherwise constructive in this comment)

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bmordue
This looks like the logical next step after building a brachiograph!

[https://brachiograph.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://brachiograph.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21281525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21281525)

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WrtCdEvrydy
I wonder if we might see a resurgence of these plotters ala 3d printers.

A tronxy x1 is $85 right now for a full small form factor 3d printer.

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homarp
a review of the tronxy x1
[https://www.techradar.com/reviews/tronxy-x1/2](https://www.techradar.com/reviews/tronxy-x1/2)
check aliexpress or similar for the $89

self upgrade to make it better:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/81xkut/tronxy_x...](https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/81xkut/tronxy_x1_before_and_after_selfprinted_upgrades/)

