[HN Gopher] Drawing Machines
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       Drawing Machines
        
       Author : TheAceOfHearts
       Score  : 123 points
       Date   : 2024-06-12 12:44 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (drawingmachines.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (drawingmachines.org)
        
       | gilleain wrote:
       | Hah. I bought and tried to use a pantograph. It was fun, but
       | seemed only accurate for scaling up or down over a limited range
       | of scales. Obviously I'm a terrible amateur at using them, so
       | perhaps it was a skill issue...
        
       | jerojero wrote:
       | Pretty much the only way to get a hold of these in South America
       | is to either buy a cricut (or similar proprietary solution) or
       | buy a Chinese one.
       | 
       | I wish these were a bit more popular! I think drawing bots will
       | never be as useful or popular as 3d printers so we might be stuck
       | with poor solutions or building our own. The axidraw software is
       | open source but I'm not sure there's been a whole lot of effort
       | into adapting it to open hardware solutions. Though there's a
       | project on thingverse that seems compatible.
        
         | bee_rider wrote:
         | Is a 3D printer closer to a drawing machine or a conventional
         | printer. I think of printers as working on pixels (maybe I'm
         | wrong about this) while drawing machines and 3D printers have
         | lines as their primitives, right? Maybe 3D printers could
         | become drawing machine, haha. 3D to 2D drawing machine project:
         | project on a plane.
        
           | nkozyra wrote:
           | I look at a 3D printer as an additive counterpart to a CNC
           | machine. I think the lack of a z-axis is what separates
           | drawing machines.
        
           | chucksta wrote:
           | Drawing machine, its a popular small project to print a pen
           | adapter and use them to draw
        
         | nkozyra wrote:
         | I bought an Axidraw a while back (and love it!) but having seen
         | a lot of the homegrown ones I feel like it's a relatively
         | lower-level project assuming you're good with working with
         | steppers and motors.
         | 
         | I've seen wall-sized vertical ones that work with a
         | microcontroller, some threads and a few servers.
        
         | geepytee wrote:
         | The era of drawing machines already came and went, and it
         | wasn't 3D printers that killed them.
        
       | bbor wrote:
       | Great website -- the About page is the best part IMO. Preempted
       | my snark beautifully, and taught me something somewhat profound
       | about art!
       | 
       | > What isn't a Drawing Machine?
       | 
       | > A drawing must be drawn: photography and inkjet printers are
       | ways to mechanize the image-making process, but they are not
       | drawing machines. Drawing is the slow reveal, the gradual
       | accumulation of contours and marks into an image...
       | 
       | > In this larger etymological context, producing a picture by
       | making lines and marks -- to draw -- literally means to pull or
       | drag a pencil or pen across a surface. It is a physical act. It
       | is active pursuit, emphasis on pursuit. You chase, seek, and
       | pursue the final drawing
        
       | derefr wrote:
       | The more-common term for a "drawing machine" is a "plotter", no?
       | 
       | (I guess you wouldn't normally call a non-automated "drawing
       | machine" a plotter -- but why is that?)
        
         | athenot wrote:
         | That's one of them, as mentioned on the site. ;)
        
         | chucksta wrote:
         | Plotter is a drawing machine connected to a computer
        
       | 1-more wrote:
       | Pantographs are used in woodworking too! Put a router in place of
       | a pen and have the stylus trace a jig and you're cutting
       | accurate, repeatable tenons! Here's an example
       | https://woodgears.ca/pantorouter/setup.html
       | 
       | They're also used horizontally to trace letters/drawings into
       | wood as in the traditional use of the pantograph
       | https://woodgears.ca/pantograph/index.html
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | I've also seen a pantograph unit on a flame cutter; instead of
         | manually tracing a jig it had a magnetic follower, so one
         | created a maquette out of thin sheet metal by some other
         | method, and then it would cut the same/scaled shape out of
         | massive (5cm?) steel.
        
         | nkozyra wrote:
         | Probably more fun than a CNC router, which is another DIY
         | project I've seen popping up in lieue of more expensive
         | options.
        
       | AstroJetson wrote:
       | Well that ended up being a hour long rat hole. So many awesome
       | pictures.
        
       | pbronez wrote:
       | Really neat site. Would love to see the pages for each machine
       | type link to a curated list of modern implementations, especially
       | plans to make such a device yourself.
        
       | teepo wrote:
       | I had a friend that interned for a state senator and she operated
       | the "Robo Pen" to sign correspondence. I was impressed to see
       | this listed on the site:
       | https://www.drawingmachines.org/post.php?id=207
        
       | spacecadet wrote:
       | Myself and some other local artists salvaged and built a NC based
       | stepper motor driven wall mounted drawing machine that held a
       | sharpie and drew SVGs out of illustrator. Was neat demo at the
       | time.
        
       | szvsw wrote:
       | Sharing a drawing machine I designed and wrote about a few years
       | ago but never published: an analog mechanism for producing
       | digital conic projection perspectives inspired by Piero Della
       | Francesca's "Other Method," which is essentially a 15th century
       | drawing algorithm for sampling a point cloud and representing it
       | in 2D perspective. I can convert this into a blog post if people
       | are interested. Unfortunately my professor kept the actual
       | machine for their "collection"...
       | 
       | Write up/reflections:
       | https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wz86p0z0exxlaj5omhtfa/the-oth...
       | 
       | Abstracted visualization of the algorithm and animation of the
       | mechanism:
       | https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/pst87255tjt9nvpqwloyp/the-oth...
        
         | Daub wrote:
         | Fascinating stuff. Thanks.
        
       | Daub wrote:
       | I teach drawing from observation. I start off with talking about
       | projection and drawing machines then show them how to create
       | their own 'conceptual'mdrawing machine using nothing but the
       | straight edge of a pencil. The trick is to identify points in the
       | scene (intersections, corners, features etc) which corespond to
       | each other on a vertical or horizontal axis. with a few of those
       | done, the whole drawing drops into place.
       | 
       | Edit. Unless I am missing something, I see no mention of Van
       | Goghs sighting grid. Crude, but effective.
       | 
       | http://www.vangoghreproductions.com/art-techniques/perspecti...
        
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