In between robot battles at Seattle Bot Battle IV, I got a chance to interview Scott Ferguson about his computer controlled CNC etchasketch. He can make his computer control the etchasketch. Scott usually makes robots that kill other robots, but took up the kinetic art challenge for the event.
One of the things that impressed me is that Scott positioned the servos stepper motors so that he can use a big or a pocket etchasketch by just switching the pullies and changing the settings on his computer. He also wrote the program that controlls the Etcha Sketch. Click here to get the video (MP4) delivered automatically with iTunes. This video will play on PC/Mac/Linux/PSPs and iPod video devices – Link.
8 thoughts on “MAKE VIDEO PODCAST: Computer Controlled CNC Etchasketch”
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I know this is pendantic of me, but those are stepper motors, not servos :P Important when it comes to torque and accuracy of such a system.
Btw that video doesn’t play on firefox, with itunes installed and running, win2k and all the latest versions of ff and itunes.
“i’m gonna go draw boobs on the etchasketch”
“go ahead, they always come out square!”
Pointing out steppers vs. servos isn’t pedantic. I’ll show you pedantic…
“his computer controlled CNC etchasketch. He can make his computer control the etchasketch.”
His computer controlled computer numeric controlled etchascketch allows a computer to control the etchascsetch? You don’t say! Does it control it numerically?
That’s awesome, servo or no servo. Technically, a stepper motor can be a component of a servomechanism, but if what you mean by servo is a closed loop control, then no it’s not really a servo. BUT, his mill software is cool. It generates g codes, which means you could use it to control cnc mills, lathes, & whatnot. That’s pretty cool. Replace the etchascketch nobs with a worm-gear driven table and you’d have a rudimentaty cnc mill. That’s way cool by any standard.
Further more… You could easily rig up a simple CNC lathe with this example. This is definitely a cool hack.