X/Y robot with MakeBlock (Part 1)

I didn’t take part in their Kickstarter but I kept an eye on MakeBlock since I discovered them. MakeBlock is a contruction platform just like LEGO, just much more solid. It’s based on aluminium extrusions with 8/16mm hole pattern so it also works perfectly with LEGO Technic parts. After giving the kids one kit each for their Maker Faire robots, I got envious and ordered the huge Lab Kit for myself. Watching the kids robots progressing, I got really impressed with the build quality so I got the desire to create a robot project for myself .

The X/Y Gantry kit looked like a great starting point for a drawing robot. OK. I’ll order that one as well as some parts. Seven MakeBlock orders later, I now have a basic gantry running. The original kit is so flimsy that I wouldn’t want to move it, so I used the new 24x24mm extrusions as a frame to get stability. This means that the robot is fairly big and takes up a huge portion of my desk, but hey - it’ll be cool.

Next up is building a servo gripper that can go pick up different pens. My current idea is to be able to encode images as RGB and then have the rbot draw that using Red, Green and Blue pens. We’ll see how it goes 😊