The MidTBot is a small and simple little pen plotter designed by bdring. Thank you, bdring, for always sharing your wonderful projects.
In this fork, I will share the results of actually using it and modifying it to my liking based on the V1 controller.
This fork, like the original project, is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
If you like this project, please consider donating to bdring using the Donation button at the end of the page.
- The belts leading to the head block are parallel to each other.
- The toe side of the foot is lengthened to stabilize the head height.
- Aligned gear height.
- Tail block gear shafts are now firmly secured.
- The depth of the rubber mounting holes in the feet was adjusted to allow for a slight backward tilt.
- Three shafts on the X-axis were made wider and wider to stabilize the movement when the Y-axis is extended.
- The cover was designed to appear slim. The motif is based on a car equipped with a supercharger.
- Interchangeable pen holders for multi-color drawing. Requires magnets.
The MidTBot is a small and simple little pen plotter. All of the custom parts are 3D printed. The rest of the parts are low cost and easy to get.
The controller uses an ESP32 running FluidNC firmware. It can be controlled via USB, Bluetooth or Wifi. You can simply upload gcode files to the unboard SD card and print.
The machine is controlled by a unique H-bot configuration, that uses a single belt. Two small stepper motors drive that belt in a special way to move in the X/Y plane. The pen is lifted by a hobby servo using a very simple and accurate mechanism.
Here is a link to a video of the plotter in action.
The project is open source (Creative commons 4.0 Attribution - Share Alike) and all the files are in this Github repo. Assembly instructions are here. If you have questions, please ask them by opening an issue in this repo.
Click on image for interactive viewer in browser.
There currently are no full kits for sale. Controller kits were available on Tindie. As of May 2023, it is discontinued.
This project represents a lot of work. Please consider a safe, secure and highly appreciated donation via the PayPal link below.
