It's a 2-axes version of a hexapod (surprisingly called a bipod).
The bipod kinematics was implemented as descibed in chapter "Non-trivial kinematics" in the Integrator Manual: https://gist.github.com/koppi/1568212
In configs/bipod_stepper.hal we added the lines:
loadrt bipodkins setp bipodkins.Bx 1220
where "1220" is the space in mm between the two motor axes.
The next three photos show the bipod plotting the Inkscape drawing [Month, Day, Weekday, Day/Night, Hour, Minute, Second] by Tavmjong Bah:
The Z axis of the bipod:
The timing belt and the second axis joint.
The IBM Thinkpad X30 connects to the stepper motor drivers via its parallel port:
The software cam.py was used to trace the paths of the drawing and create the ngc file:
The AXIS GUI:
[Inkscape] and a patched version of cam.py were used to create the ngc file.
With the use of EMC2 and the bipod kinematics applied the machine moves XY (in carthesian space) just fine. The machine was inspired by Alex Joni's Toy and by the work of [Jürg Lehni and Uli Franke]. Over time several people around the world enjoyed creating their own incarnation of hektor:
* Vic Aprea and Paul Grzymkowski: http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProjects/s2001/vp2/ * Casey Canfield, Roland Crosby, Jessi Murray and Hermes Taylor: http://rolocroz.com/wallrus/ * Miguel Sánchez: http://fightpc.blogspot.com/2008/02/vertical-plotter-article.html * Romado12187: http://spritesmods.com/?art=whiteboard&f=had * Jan Van Gilsen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdSAGfyygMs