SphereBot

thingiverse

Easter is fast approaching, so I'll be prepared with some fun activities for my dear friends and their children. To impress them, I've built an amazing SphereBot which can draw on spherical objects like eggs, golf balls, and even table tennis balls! Inspired by the EggBot, this creation uses old stepper motors, steel rods from scanners, MDF, plywood, and 3D-printed parts from a MakerBot Cupcake. The SphereBot is controlled by an Arduino and two Polulu A4983 stepper motor drivers on a breadboard. It interprets GCode sent over the serial port, so I can print MakerBot Unicorn designs directly onto my SphereBot. To make it even better, Marty McGuire's Inkscape plugin allows me to convert vector drawings into printable GCode. The open-source firmware is available on pleasantsoftware.com, and a video of the SphereBot in action can be found on YouTube. I've also drawn plans for the wooden parts and uploaded STL and SCad files for the printed parts. A Processing implementation of the SphereBotSender GUI now runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. Stay tuned for more updates as I work on drawings for non-printed parts, and find all the source code and links on pleasantsoftware.com.