Have a look at this pdf. It would be an ambitious build but I think it would be a next level blow minds kind of project. We would have three weeks from Monday to complete giving us week to tweek it. I am prepared to work straight through after this weekend.

Little custom parts most everything is off the shelf. We have all the electronics. Would just need the power transmission stuff. I am figuring a budget of sub $800 350 for PT components the rest for material and out side fab.

I will take a look and be in touch tonight.

Cool

Tell me about the electronics, OS and the software to run the motors (gcode interpreter?)…. that will help me determine the unknowns.  The build looks possible in that time frame but you do have two external vendors involved so that’s always a risk.

True. I think just a headless Linux box the reset could be an Arduino input. We can run emc and your random generator.

I can get stuff order when you green light it and I can have the stuff to the fab guys straight a way…

The electronics choice makes it known territory although I’ve never autoloaded anything on boot.  I’m guessing there’s a direct interace to emc2 — i need to evaluate that.  i’ll start there for tonight.

the rest of it, the reset switch and what-not is trivial.

you’ll have to explain the motor and pt setup.

Ball screws are similar to lead screws but with a more aggressive thread pitch and the nut glides on bearings and is preloaded for backlash. They are very fast. The motors are just standard stepper motors. Vb1 ran nema. 23′s the palette shuttle and tool changer on Vb4 are powered by nema 17′s and the brush spinner on vb4 is a nema 11. As you move from heavier loads the x to lighter loads the z a smaller motor is used.

The y is counter levered on the x so the y is balanced over the x. The guide rail is a hardened and chromed rod that has linear bearing that travels the length they are load bearing as well.

This all based on that high end gantry system the pen-omatic was based on.

I took a quick look at emc2 CLI options and nothing jumped out at me.  So, I decided the best thing to do is not mess with it and just use axis. We’ll set the machine up and take the monitor away once the program is loaded.  Put a UPS on it and hope for the best.  Gcode can be written to handle the reset and all the control points and random generation will be stored in sub routines… hmmmm, i hope gcode can do trig.  well, i have some studying to do.

That leaves a discussion on the PT methods and also this machine must have homing capabilities on all three axes.  It’s three, right?

Yep just 3. Home will be in the ink well there is a g80 something that will make the machine go back to home. You stick in at the end of the sub.

I meant homing switches.  2/axis is standard.  But since the machine will never be shut off once installed we could probably get away without using mechanical homing.  If we had the time it would be nice to be able to just turn it on and it loads all the software and homes automatically.  Just thinking out loud but we probably don’t have time to make it look good and have good brains.

That would be cool I’ve got a bag full of switches I will make it so.

Metal and Beam

Tronics

Junk Computer boots with UNbuntu

Got the carcass and the foot glued up for the pedestal. Also got the computer to do a shut a down when you hit the power button and reboot and open up axis whenyou hit the power button. I am sure you’ll be able to make it load the file we want and have it run… Now I need to find a spot for the power button.

Emailed the tile co at 1pm asking them what was up have not heard back plan on visiting them in person tomorrow. d-bags! pedestal should be ready for sanding and finishing by te after noon.

Called the tile co guy said oh I haven’t had time to really look at that… he said he’d look at this afternoon. If I don’t have a quote by 10 am I am going to tell him to forget it and go with flagstone and shape it myself.

Got all the PT stuff in. Looks good.
Pedestal is done with the exception of edgebanding the exposed ply on the backside . I’ve got the banding forgot to bring in my iron…the adhesive is heat sensitive.

I am holding off on the shelves until I am wiring. Tomorrow get the bandin on fill some holes and gaps then start on the pt.

Oh on the down side burned up my table saw this afternoon after I was trash talking it with john this am… :-)

let this simmer in your brain pan for a bit…

[Van-Go-Bot]
[Art & The Machine]
[Defining An Ever-Changing Landscape]

artistic movements such as cubism and futurism mirrored a rapidly changing, technologically oriented world. through the medium of technology, culture reinvented itself everywhere and artists, as they do, responded.

today, as then, the splendor of the world is enriched with the beauty of speed and radical extensions of cultural memory.

we use computers to trade throughout the global market.

we diagnose, predict and assess medical procedures.

we computerize nearly every working aspect of automobiles, traffic control systems, electrical power grids and our toasters.

we sing praise upon the ubiquity of automation and computerization in every aspect of contemporary life.

systems exist – cars that correct their position on the road due to inattentive driving – phone systems that listen to our voices and reply with the answers we need – blood tests that diagnose the condition of our hearts – these systems are extensions of ourselves and our culture…

rules for the use of these things are simply part of our conceptual grasp, our internal representations, of those things. as such it is no more unusual for us to use electronics and high level computer programming languages to create works of art as it is to create houses with power tools.

The technological cultural shock-wave crested in the 20th century and we are now in the midst of a crashing wave full of systems less than human, perhaps, but potentially capable of many of the higher intellectual functions we have in generations past supposed to be uniquely human. We are in the process of coming to terms with the fact that intelligence no longer means, uniquely, human intelligence.

08 12 2011

Got the pedestal edge banded and shellacked . Started on the PT stuff have the fram for the X welded up. Did not here back from Midwest tile I let them know I was going with plan B. Already have picked up stone and have it layed out. It will look nice. Ran out of gas for the welder for this morning. Picked up a new tank out at linweld while I was there I asked them if they new of any small job shops who weld aluminum they turned me on to a place they said I could just walk into.

good progress… on track?

i got the video portion figured out.  I have looping video on an apple tv… installed some after market os stuff and it’s working.

So my plan right now is to keep it simple and do time lapse paintings. 30 second spots from the best-of popartmachine list.  I mentioned the new render program naturally produces vids so I added that code today and there’s an input function “duration”…. tell it you want a 30 second time lapse a nd it poops one out.

They are good.  All textury and pretty.  Figured 30 second spots was like watching commercials just enough to tease and then bam another one.

So I’m going to crank those this weekend and then start thinking about copy to go with fliers and maybe a wall mounted statement piece..  I have some ideas..

Still dont have anything to show you for the new bot but I know what I’m doing and I figured we’ll find the day you’re ready to test and I’ll come down with my kit and we’ll play.

Yeah I feel good about where we are at. Keeping it simple.

Videos sound great. Like the idea of
It just doing video after video that’s a piece of art right there.

I am still thinking the week of the 29th is tweak week.

I have some copy bouncing around that I think is better than anything else to date.  I’ll try to get it in an email today and maybe go back and forth a couple times w/ you on it before Wed.

I had a bizarre idea of painting a statement on unprimed canvas using vb4 along w/ a decorative motif on the top/sides.  I’m saying that out loud but  had already thought it too weird but give it a once over.

might be interesting…

In at 6 this am and have hit a good stopping point.

Tomorrow. Tear it all down do final welds grind and paint reassemble. Will start the z too.

Sunday finish z.

Monday start wiring.

Torn Down

Stone Shaping

08 21 2011

Stone is not mounted just sitting there back together though.

Trying to figure out what you did to the stone :)

I cut it and ground a flat spot..

Aha! :)  OK, I thought there was something I was missing.  Looks good, looks like you busted weekend ass, nice work!

08 25 2011

3 weeks 3axes

Cow 2.5 d

That’s fantastic!!

08 29 2011

Larry called last night… Due to the buzz that’s been generated from our printouts we left him he is going to clean out his studio space on the first floor and set us up in there. Tv is a go etc. He was super stoked about what we were doing. He said the 5th would be ideal I didn’t have a chance to tell him that was labor day. I’ll touch base with him Friday to solidify a time.

Good!  If anything catches on fire we’ll be right next to the exhaust port!

Brushes. I am thinking #2

I’ll send some drawings

Cool

Back door

All the gear stuffed in the pedastal

08 30 2011

see attached, 200 assembled drawings, no edits… some tweaks pending … not to mention a review between the two of us…

There’s some funny stuff in there! That’s great! are you in the office? tried calling.

yah! just leaving

Just calling to see if you were coming…

Is it running?

I jsut got home for dinner I am going back. just have solder motor wires. And wire the home/limit switches up. All the connections on the controller and computer side are done. I powered it up and all the led are on. the computer booted up to.  I can let you know for sure at midnight but I am pretty confident it will be running in the am.

Hehe take your time I made plans for tomorrow … when its going we’ll remote dialog … give you time to tune … then decide about me coming there Friday or you coming here.  I have some to do list for you software side.

Ha!! I am still heading back out

All soundsgood

09 02 2011

Looks like there must be fires in Omaha etc… I will finish everything up today install software get switches working and I’ll just come up to Omaha early on TUesday. So don’t worry about coming down here.

Good and Bad
Bad… emc reads ahead… no way to generate gcode on the fly so far as I can tell … need to look into it more.

Good… as long as the drawings are made in advance works great… I will send details later.

Hmm that is bummer.

I’ll dig around too. Knowing how the ai works gives me toms of ideas for primitives

Primitives me too… a week wasn’t enough time… remember my ray tracing comment … will send photos and summary in a bit.

The real review
OK, finally time to get away.

We’re OK for the show as-is.  I need to generate several hundred drawings and load them onto the sumitron.  Sumitron will queue them up at random, keeping a log of what’s been painted in order to avoid duplication.

To be honest I’m more concerned with the longer term impacts resulting from the inability to generate AI style gcode within emc.  I’m sure we can resolve the issue but it is a concern.

As for the show, I say we just fudge a little bit and say they are as we intended.  The result is the same.

I did about 4 or 5 drawings after determining the trouble… I was getting 30+ inches of brush travel.  The drawings go fast.  Some minor quibbles with level in the drawing “pan”.  closer to the back of the machine and if you’re standing behind it to the right is maybe 1/8″ higher than the opposite away and left from back.  Pretty god damn close for eye balling it.

Hmmm, what else.. oh yeah before I figured out that emc wouldnt read generated gcode in loop I had already determined that the matter was ill fated — the fractal based backgrounds were taking over 2 minutes to generate on that old pc.  i hacked it to dumb them down but actually i’m glad it will paint the higher quality “canned” drawings.

bottom line enjoy some r&r and see you tuesday i;ll be ready.  And we definitely need that extra weight on the wood axis enclosure.

Very good I can tweak the table… Have lots of ideas I am on the belt wagon with you. See you Tuesday with everything complete etc.

It’s AI as far as I am concerned. Got my haircut thursday ran into a programer guy from the old days. He said I read your building a new machine. Didn’t ask him where he read it…

09 05 2011

Done…

See you in the am 10ish… I’ll call when I leave Lincoln.
Bringing cards
Pedestals
monitor kybd etc.
Network cable
UPS

Any thing else???

09 07 2011

I think I have things dialed in.  Got the scaling issue fixed with INI file changes.  Am on my 2nd “real” drawing.  Going to punch out as many as I can, clean up and take pix.

That is great news!!!! Thanks for the update!

and some notes…  everything is cool, i left instructions and labeled the machine switch with a bit of blue tape.  did 14 drawings nd machine is loaded for 30 more or so.  tweaked a few speeds, etc etc now all we do is wait.  honestly, i think it looks good.  i think larry is happy.

hope you are back on your feet – time to start on the SF ptg!!!!

higher detail on line w/ 24 colors depending on needs

I kind of like the amount of detail in the proof. Your call. Sky looks great!

File done. Kind washey could have used more frequent mixes. Overall looks good and will work

I’ll make some adjustments … not until Monday … didn’t bring my rig.

Ruskin Sky finished

Ruskin foreground 1

Lookin good brush is dialed in

Ruskin fg 1 #2

Did you notice how far off some of the buildings are in the BG?  The way I ran the FG, I used a difference engine so look at these two pix and you can see we’re headed(?) for trouble … note the areas not painted in the FG.

Flop (horizonal flip) the BG and note the building colors … many of them appear to have missed any black in their mixes.

I’m going to generate the next FG file and then I guess there’s probably not any sense going back to paint more BG so we’ll just have to mask the FG again after this one is done….. well, hopefully not but whatever.

Can’t pull the images will check when I get in.

I’m not overly concerned…

Half way thru fg2

Fg 3 finished

Fg4 done

Lines

L2 done more code please

done

Stretched.

Wow those look awesome! Nice job, I will see what I can do to get them back on track. Just finished up getting VB4 clean. Having some issues getting the buckles out of the canvas… Don’t want to get it skewed. Will pick up there in the am. Add a couple of more items to the list I’ll send the new copy before I call in the am.

I see a problem with the BG on the lower left behind the light pole

I think it should be masked and painted but I’m not sure with what color maybe one of the premixes from the fridge if they are still there.  I can wing it and send the NGC with no color mixing if you have the paint.

Sounds good. Is it that sky blue mix?

Not in the pepsi bottle but one of the lighter blues in the syringes. if those have been cleaned out then the bottle was the basis for the others.

Nope still have them I’ll squirt some paint and see what’s in them they all look the same from the out side.

I don’t have copies of the VB4 and VB3 foreground-2 files. Those sources were pulled off our VPN in the McD’s parking lot and hand assembled on my macbook which is at home.

I need to know the last sub number in each file in order to build the next ones.

Have you had a chance to run VB4 new file/ The fix is done.

Not yet! I’ll get it here in just a bit. Did the fix look reasonable?

We painted over the pole and the blue is a little dark but I think we can get a way with it.

OK – no worries the pole has more coming in the line….

Finally sitting down here and will generate the vb4 file then one for vb3

No rush I am actually working on the pollock bot

First glance I’d say it’s in there with the rest… stretch it?

will do

OK, cool then snap a picture, give me a call and we’ll compare and contrast :)

Early pm.

Looking good except for missing trailer.

Brushes have been main concern last couple days. Still pondering that. Should both be done in the am…

Black Done Starting lines

lost a brush at 2522. This is more a frequent problem due to the stubby brushes hitting the edge of the canvas and decoupling with longer bristles not so much of problem.

Missing code…
i don’t remember what you did to warrant removing the first color from the ngc foreground. but basically it looks like it got chopped out prematurely. i could probably get somewhat close to isolating just the shapes you dropped but the above PNG shows all the strokes rendered in that color.

EMC had crashed so we split the file in half. We started the file at 2059. So I think it was just to reduce the file size.

I remember now. It crashed and I rolled it back to the last color mix. Must not have been painting anything for awhile before the crash. I’ll see what I can do but more than likely will end up painting a lot that doesn’t really need it.

That was the morning that the mixer arm had splattered shit every where and I made a new mixer arm. There was an area of drops and smears on the canvas. Who knows what happened it didn’t look like brush strokes though. I’ll send photo when this layer is done. I am reloading the paint. White ran out.

Can we get away with this

For sure. I’ll just watch it real close may be swap in a smaller brcush when we get out side the actual area. Might even sharpen it up.

Looks like you’re best off running with single tubes of everything and doing a black/white refill when needed.

Is the the Black redo or the lines. Speaking of VB4 EMC just took a dump.

reference image

Ok That’s what I thought! Thanks! We are back up. This should look good!

Just got done with L2 haven’t done the trailer yet.

Finished