Project Name : 3-AXIS DRAWING MACHINE

Students Name : Ahmad Moharib, Mohammad Arar Alia Ghunaim, Saja Abu Naseer, Razan Hijazeen

Supervisor Name: Dr. Samer Motawe

Abstract

Introduction

Methodology

Result

Discussions & Conclusions

References

HASHEMITE UNIVERSITYFACLTY OF ENGINEERING

SCIENTIFIC DAY 30 APR 2015

We had several goals for this project and the machine. The machine would balance high precision and speed, use limited resources and as many recycled parts as possible, and be reproducible by a hobbyist. The software would correctly transform the several image files into binary machine control instructions, and these instructions would then be used to control the machine, and this advanced feature needs more of time.

Our mechanical design consists of a wooden frame and pieces , on which is mounted three axis of motion in a standard Cartesian coordinate system. Each axis is driven by a stepper motor driven by a custom motor driver circuit. The control of the stepper motors was the primary challenge of the hardware systems, requiring circuit design, prototyping and fabrication.Then the wooden pieces may cause some errors and imprecise drawing, which means that the machine must be full of metal designed.

Engineering as a discipline often requires more integration than large amounts of original development. In a typical project, writing new code presents significant challenges, and the number of features shared between projects means that it is possible to create shared components which implement common features.

The plotter is a computer printer for printing vector graphics In the past, plotters were used in applications such as computer, though they have generally been replaced with wide-format conventional printers. A plotter gives a hard copy of the output. It draws pictures on paper using a pen. Plotters are used to print designs of ships and machines, plans for buildings and so on.

Pen plotters print by moving a pen or other instrument across the surface of a piece of paper. This means that plotters are vector graphics devices, rather than raster graphics as with other printers. Pen plotters can draw complex line art, including text, but do so slowly because of the mechanical movement of the pens. They are often incapable of efficiently creating a solid region of colour, but can hatch an area by drawing a number of close, regular lines.

Plotters offered the fastest way toefficiently produce very largedrawings or colour high-resolutionvector-based artwork whencomputer memory was veryexpensive and processor powerwas very limited, and other typesof printers had limited graphicoutput capabilities.

Pen plotters have essentially become obsolete, and have been replaced by large-format inkjet printers and LED toner based printers. Such devices may still understand vector languages originally designed for plotter use, because in many uses, they offer a more efficient alternative to raster data.

[1] Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller: <http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega2560>.

[2] Stepper Motors: <http://arduino.cc/en/reference/stepper>. <http://www.instructables.com>. <http://forum.arduino.cc >.

[3] H-Bridge Motor Driver: <http://www.instructables.com >. <http://www.fairchildsemi.com/an/AN/AN-3005.pdf>.

[4] Easy Driver Stepper Motor: <http://www.schmalzhaus.com/EasyDriver/>.

We were able to produce a machine that performed well enough to meet our goals for precision, cost, and deadline. We started early on the hardware which allowed us to work through some of the problems we encountered such as needing to upgrade our length for the X and Y axis and rewiring our motor driver circuits. This reduced the risk associated with hardware prototyping which was by far the highest risk part of our project. We were also able to implement all of the necessary components of our machine a couple of weeks before our project deadline. We had to cut a few of our extra features in order to meet our deadline, such as a positional feedback system and an automatic tool changer, but we were successful because we prioritized these features and worked on the essentials first. Our success can easily be attributed to the planning and prioritizing we did prior to beginning the project.We left ourselves room in our schedule for unexpected delays and began our project early. All of these factors contributed to a successful project which began in the planning phase and ended with a deliverable product which meets the expectations we set for ourselves

This plotter machine designed to handle with two functions, the first one is drawing and the second is writing, we used Arduino Mega 2560 [1] microcontroller to program this machine, our system consists of three bipolar stepper motors can be driven using the H-Bridge circuit [2], these motors used in this project to move and control the position of the slider parts of the drawing machine [3] .

The slider parts (rails) have been got from a stock CD-Drives. In each CD-Drive there will be a sled with a readily mounted stepper motor; this great idea economized the costs; a three stock CD-Drives will suffice the purpose, then each sled will represent an axis in this plotter machine.

The following figures illustrate the operation of the bipolar stepper motor and shown the sequence that should be applied on the 4 leads of the motor [4] .

The image that will be drawn by the machine initially converted to black and white then into binary 0's and 1's either by MATLAB or other software.

A library or an existing module allows the use of a well developed and tested component, which saves significant resources in the implementation of the project. The drawback of components is the need to integrate various potentially conflicting interfaces, and the need to understand a complex system in order to effectively use the component.Components can be purchased, or may be freely available, as in the case of Open Source software. Open Source also provides the opportunity to contribute new features and bug fixes back in to the community. The programs and tools we chose for this project are all open source, and use international standards, which allowed us to develop the features needed as possible as we can.

The purpose of this project was to make a 3-axis pen plotter as cheaply as possibly could.Perhaps we have never been gifted at drawing, or we don’t have the time to do it yourself, so why not let a simple plotter machine draw for us. This simple project is a three axis device can accurately moves a pen to draw out anything.

The program reads binary stored in a word array in row/column fashion and then controls the motors accordingly. We can change what the machine prints by changing the data in the "image" array. It's pretty basic and shouldn't be too hard to understand or change to fit our wants better.

As shown in the following figure the plotter machine has also the capability to write words and sentences using Hard code method represents every single character individually, and that work in the same way with numbers and signs.