Turning a $60 Ender 3 into a Plotter: Generative Art Experiments
Experiments with Plotter Art
A developer repurposes an old Ender 3 3D printer into a pen plotter by attaching a fineliner with magnets. Using Inkscape and the Simple Inkscape Scripting extension, they generate gcode from vector paths and create flowy abstract shapes with a Python algorithm. The setup is frictionless, allowing for rapid experimentation with generative art.
Because the set-up is so frictionless, I can spend more time experimenting and learning new techniques.
- JKCalhoun
I'd love to have a plotter.
(But for the pen lifting as another pointed out) the plotter seems to be being used as a modern day harmonograph (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonograph).
The analog versions have been amusing us for over 100 years.
(One of the best father/son memories I have was a summer spent in Alaska visiting my father. While I waited for the salmon season to begin, so I could start work at the cannery, we had a kind of harmonograph build-off in his well-provisioned garage. I went for the standard design with the paper platen on a rocking pendulum—the pen driven perpendicular with a second pendulum. My dad threw money at his build to pick up some pricey-for-me, small, ball-and-socket joints intended for R/C car/boat drives. Not known for his creativity, he nonetheless came up wth a 4-pendulum design where two pendulums drove the platen and two others the pen. The results spoke for themselves: while my harmonograph designs always spiraled inevitably down to a point in the center of the design, my dad's might appear to be collapsing but then, as a pendulum pair began to move again in phase, the design would suddenly flower again as you watched it being traced out.)
Similar to the one I built: https://coimages.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/128/977/large_190...
A clever one that, while different than my dad's, likely gives similar results: http://pedrotucker.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/harmono...
(A "Boy Mechanic" book from the turn of the 20th Century depict […]
- chriskw
In my experience plotter art is a fantastic creative outlet for programmers/people with math backgrounds, especially if your day job doesn't produce anything physical in the real world. Shameless self-plug but I recently animated some old plotter pieces which was surprisingly easy since most of my plots were just piles of math that could be parameterized over time without too much hassle: https://chriskw.xyz/art/
Also big shout out to Michael Fogleman who's pieces inspired me to impulse buy an Axidraw at the beginning of quarantine: https://www.michaelfogleman.com/plotter/
- TheMiddleMan