Uber-maker Niklas Roy (see all his MAKE mentions) built this excellent pen plotter out of Finnish cardboard, welding rod, rubber bands, tape, and glue. I especially love the all-cardboard interface!
When I gave a workshop at the School of Art and Design in Offenbach about building digital devices out of cardboard, the students asked me to build a machine as well. I always wanted to own a plotter – so I didn’t have to think too long about what exactly I’d build. (…)
As an interface, I built two rotary dials and a switch. One of the dials moves the pen in y-position. The other dial moves the table under then pen in x-position. The switch lifts the pen or puts it on the paper. When I was done with building the plotter, I also compiled a little code book with coordinates for several drawings. They are written down as a list of numbers from 0 to 9, which makes it effectively a very simple digital storage medium for low resolution vector graphics.
By the way, Niklas’s Cardboard Computers workshop looks amazing!
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