Lessons Learned While Building A DIY Pen Plotter

There was a time when plotters were the pinnacle of computer graphics output. While they aren’t as common as they used to be, there are some advantages to having a plotter. [Symon] wanted a p…

GrblHAL CNC Controller Based On RP2040 Pico

[Phil Barrett] designed a new CNC controller breakout board called the PicoCNC which uses the Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 module and grblHAL. It packs a bunch of features typical of these controllers,…

DIY Laser For Ablating Metal

For those who wish to go beyond through-hole construction on perfboard for their circuit boards, a printed circuit board is usually the next step up. Allowing for things like surface-mount componen…

Arctos Robotics: Build A Robot Arm Out Of 3D Printer Spares?

ARCTOS is a 6-DOF robot arm based upon 3D printed mechanics running a modified version of GRBL firmware. Let’s get this straight now, the firmware is open source, but the hardware plans are a…

The $50 Pen Plotter

[Arca] sets out to build himself a low-cost pen plotter that doesn’t require access to a 3D printer. The plotter uses a coreXY arrangement, powered by 28BYJ-48 stepper motors, which he overdr…

$60 Laser Makes The Cut With New Controller

If you are reading the Lightburn forums, you probably already have a laser cutter of some kind.  But, if you are like most of us, you can always be tempted into another “deal.” [Dkj4lin…

AntRunner Is The Satellite Antenna Mount You Need To Take With You

It stands to reason, that should you wish to communicate with a satellite, whatever antenna you use should point at that satellite. Some of us have done this by hand, following the bright dot of th…

Mokeylaser: A DIY Laser Engraver That You Can Easily Build

[Mark aka Mokey] borrowed his friend’s open-frame laser engraver for a while, and found it somewhat lacking in features and a bit too pricey for what it was. Naturally, he thought he could do…

Plotter Churns Out Labels With Roll Of Tape

Like it or not, organizing your workspace from time to time is a necessary chore. Labels can go a long way towards taming the most unruly of benches, but writing them out by hand isn’t exactl…

Ortur Laser Will Go Open-Source

Well, that was fast! Last week, we wrote about a video by [Norbert Heinz] where he called out the Ortur laser engravers for apparently using the GPL-licensed grbl firmware without providing the sou…

Watch Out For Lasercutter Manufacturers Violating GPL

For companies that build equipment like CNC machines or lasercutters, it’s tempting to use open-source software in a lot of areas. After all, it’s stable, featureful, and has typically …

Old CNC Brain Swapped With An Arduino

[Sebastian] and [Stefan Shütz] had a ISEL EP1090 CNC machine at home, sitting unused, and they decided to bring it to life. With pretty good mechanical specs, this CNC looked promising – alas…

Masking Tape Pen Plotter Gets An Upgrade

[Mr Innovative] decided to make his version of a small pen plotter (video after the break) to make labels on masking tape. The result is an impressive compact machine that is remotely controlled us…

All The Sticky Labels You Could Ever Need: No DRM, Just Masking Tape

Printable sticky labels are a marvelous innovation, but sadly also one beset by a variety of competing offerings, and more recently attempts by manufacturers to impose DRM on their media. Fortunate…

Pen Plotter From PCB Panels

Hacker [12344321A] has built a clever open-source pen plotter having a frame made from odd-shaped PCB panels (Chinese). It holds an ordinary drafting pen and draws on a small writing platform 8 x 8…

DIY CNC Uses Lots Of 3D-Printed Parts

There are probably almost as many DIY CNC designs as there are DIY CNCs. And there’s nothing wrong with that! We really liked [maxvfischer’s] documentation on GitHub for a machine he ma…

Automatic Coil Winder Gets It Done With Simple Hardware And Software

We’ve grown to expect seeing mechatronics project incorporate a standard complement of components, things like stepper motors, Arduinos, lead screws, timing belts and pulleys, and aluminum ex…