The Design and Fine Art Application of Computerised Draughting Techniques

MPhil research project, 1997.

The machine: perspex off-cuts, a sheet of plywood knocking about in the garage, nuts & bolts, a pen or pencil, and aluminium tubes ordered from an aeronautical supplier,
3M Magic tape (on the tubes to aid free movement and a match for the perspex in hardness), usual electronics – resistors/capacitors etc, 2x stepper motors, 1x solenoid,
..then programming 5-volt trigger pulses through the Parallel-port of a Commodore Amiga, to control xy motor-movement and pencil up/down.

P5086540-01 copy

I ordered multiples of all the semiconductors – the microchips, trial and error connecting the pins blew-up most:

P5086530-01

Photomicrograph, isometric ‘vertical Z-axis’ drawings:

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Along with its main purpose of pencil drawing, the machine also wrote letter-forms with a roller-ball pen.
The alphabet was mapped from graph paper to xy vector movements, the machine then writing progressed letter by letter through a text-file stored on floppy-disk:

P5086542-01 copy