As an alternative to finding hard rubber wheels, the ring on the base that the wheels ride on can be coated with a resilient compound, such as rubber roofing, or multiple coats of a latex paint. Or, sheet rubber can be cut into arcs to cover that ring, and contact cemented to the base.
this is so great. as soon as I saw it i was thinking "but how does he deal with the thread stacking up vertically?"... then i watched some more. "yeah, but... you can't just keep adding thread to the same nail over and over!"... watched some more. saw the nails at an angle. "oh man... that is a beautiful solution." Really love this. Thanks for sharing. Seems like we just need someone to write a program to convert into string art without using matlab!
For the time lapse you might try having some sort of visual angle reference on the bed that is easily visible to a camera mounted directly above it. This way you could "rotate" the bed to the same index position in each photo essentially making the time lapse look like the machine is moving around the art. I think this would be very cool looking.
@@Synthetica9 this would work fine too as long as you have a way to associate the angle to the image file. Having a mark on the bed that you simply rotate in post to the 12 o'clock position would probably be easier since you don't necessarily have to cross reference a list of files and angles. However if you were controlling the camera from the same control board and if it has a little extra processing power, it could be trivial to take the photo, immediately run something like ImageMagik on it to rotate it using the angle from the bed controller as a parameter while your string art machine is laying down the next string. Rinse and repeat and your "post" processing is done around the same time as the artwork you would just need to run the rotated and cropped image stack through ffmpeg or something to make it into a video.
Just heard your interview! All these builds are amazing! As for the time lapse, you have the solution already built in! Use the platter home switch to trigger the camera every time it spins past! Or, give the edge holders a second bump lower(or higher) then the home switch(as to not interfere), so you could trigger the camera: When it passes home. When it passes home and 180°from home. Flip the upside down pictures in post. Home, 120°, 240°, correct and align in post. Or a picture every 60°, again rotating the pictures so they align properly in post.
Really well done. Fantastic build. I've never seen one of these machines before but, having hand created string back in the day, I find this technology fascinating.
Genius! Great project, from an even greater inventor! Thx for sharing! When I was young, I used to make such graphs by hand, and the whole neighbourship wanted to get one too!
Definitely. I bought some red spools lately and it appears those look great in that combo. I was worried I never had a project to use it for, but this is great.
i really wanted to watch this machine make a full piece of art from start to finish. the engineering is amazing but watching it work would have been the most satisfying part. good job.
as for the camera part i think you can use the limit switch thing which can find the zero and find the more repeated number in the pins, for example, pin number 144, then when ever it stops on the pin 144 code the cam to click on it. i think it may help, i am not a technical expert :)
7:47 have you thought about model railroad cork roadbed? its pretty sturdy, and is used in model railroads specifically to hold its position and shape without allowing the track to deform, while still providing sound deadening.
Nice! It would be cool if the time-lapse camera could rotate with the string art, so on the animation it looks as though the machine and the room is rotating round the image as its being created.
I agree, honestly that's a whole project in and of itself that's fairly non-trivial to make. I know there's an entire product designed for shooting videos of 3D printers while keeping the printing plate in the same location in frame so the build "grows smoothly" in time lapses.
Thankyou for the inspiration. I did my electronics studies way back in the 80s and by a twist of fate found myself surfing the personal computer tsunami before moving on to programming. Things have moved on a ton since those days of discrete components. There were chips available of course but nothing compared to what we have now. As for machining and laser printing, well, a whole universe there. My youngest son has finished his studies and will be moving out so I have a room I can work in undisturbed. In the meantime, I have some catching up to do I think. :)
Another interesting idea would be to make a printer that prints in a circle. The paper rotates on wheel and the print head goes left and right, but only half way across and the paper rotates after each row of pixels printed until the paper is full.
Well that's the quickest I have ever hit subscribe from a video. I didn't even finish watching it before I hit subscribe. I guess this video is about 4 years old, but it's the first of yours that I've seen. Now off to see what else you have!
Pretty ingenious. I wish Maker Bot and other 3D Printers and CNC-like kits were available when I was much younger. I would definitely been into it and would have liked to have created something like this rig. Very Cool.
one wonderful dimension of this string art, for me, is the contrast which such a medium can attain. I mean: the black can be *really* black, as the threads create a ‘colour’ which it is probably impossible to attain using paints, merely.
Could you do a CMYK separation of the original image and then do 4 passes using 4 thread colors to stimulate a color printer? I'm thinking the number of threads used in each layer would need to be much less, but that the final result might look quite good.
I feel like you could do a timelapse with some decent image stabilization software, or you could take an image every time the threader moves and calculate the rotation manually. Though the threader would jump around, I think it'd still look pretty cool.
I've been inspired by your machine so I'm going to make my own. I am designing it for laser cutting. I played with a stepper motor for the first time I think I have that down now. Next I need to figure out the thread servo and feeder. I'll be using large thin rings of Teflon as an pseudo bearing. Where did you get those nice nails? Amazon doesn't have any good options.
pretty cool build, you should try getting some white thread and dripping dye on it of various colors, then making a picture with it :) Also putting all your moving parts on rubber bushings can reduce the noise, and adding sound absorbing material to the back side of the base will cut some noise. The gears themselves can be noisy as well, going to a belt drive system is a great way to reduce even more noise.
I'm halfway through my build. Using a lot of things I had on hand, so it's a bit different. I'm using NEMA 23 + DSP driver but I'm using arduino just because that's what I'm familiar with. I found another picture to string converter written in python. It works really well and you can control iterations, number of nails, etc. It's output is a sequence of numbers corrosponding the the pin string should go to next. Wrote a pythons script to generate arduino commands to rotate to that particular radian using that text file. Not the best...may need to rethink this. I'm using a timing belt and timing gears from automation direct at about 4.5 to 1 gear ratio (that's the best I could do since I didn't have a 3d printer at the time). My set up is not perfect and seems to be off about a nail's width every 20 rotations or so. I guess that's why you used a limit switch? I'll have to do the same and programatically recalibrate every few rotations. So far so good. Thanks for the inspiration!
Hey man that sounds like an awsome build! I am looking into doing something similar. Did it work out in the end? If you could it would be really nice to share a short vid on youtube so that people can see your work and maybe do something similar! :D
@@OMGWTFBBQSHEEP still in progress. Life got in the way. Had it going, but it would drift a radian every 10 or so rotations. Need to install a limit switch that acts as calibration or get a nema motor that has encoding closed loop.
@@ClintRobison allright, thanks for the update! The struggle with actually finishing projects is a real one that i think many of us struggles with.. Sounds like you are not too far from having a finished project tho :D
Thanks for making this Bart. Very awesome! I would really like to build this and I see at least one comment from a viewer who says he is building it. Have you published plans or stls for the machine itself? I see you published the Matlab algorithm (again, thank you) but I don't see any instructions for the machine itself outside of your video narration... Maybe I'm missing something?
Inspired by this awesome project, I am building the similar machine. My drilling fixture lacks sturdiness. Wondering if I could look into yours (open cad?). And I’d love to share my project with you as it progresses.
I wager these pieces would look really slick encased in acrylic and removed from the back board (nails removed and edges sanded) all polished up and see-through.
You could tie the camera timing to the zero position of the disc so everytime it passes zero it takes a picture or number of every full rotation of the disk.
Hey, instead of using rubber wheels, you can also try putting the bearings at a (almost) horizontal angle. It will dramatically decrease the noice, you can try it yourself by taking a bearing and running it perpendicular on a hard surface, and then try it alsmost liniar horizontal.
Honestly my favorite part about this is hte turn table, since I was just wracking my brain for a way to do something very similar for the transverse axis of a home build telescope I'm working on that I want to get properly remote controlled with star tracking and the like.
Makes me wonder what it would look like if you actually 3D printed the code for the string allowing 3D printer to lay down the thin lines. Perhaps intentionally printing a bit above the surface to allow lines printed to gravity fall so you don’t have to worry about z height for each strand? Great video and project!
To accomplish the timelapse you just need the camera to rotate at the same rate as the turntable, it just has to be set above it on some sort of light stand.
Possible time-lapse design: Mount a camera above design canvas, add markers to the brim of the canvas, after filming use the markers to stabilise the footage.
Could you embed a track of something rubberized into the table instead of searching for possibly difficult to find hard rubber wheels? Or maybe a flexible tape?
That is an option I am considering. Currently that piece is routed from the other side, so I would have to change a few things to keep it a single sided cut.
I think if you shoot from directly above and the lighting is very even (ring flash around the camera and blackout the room) you can have the time lapse run through a video stabilizing software and have it fixed that way.
Sheesh you’re smart. Great video! I imagine you could try to make this art more permanent with resin; it might look cool too. For some reason I want a one of these string art discs as a form of a picture of my passed father.
I have been working on a cnc format type machine for a similar application but this rotating platter is much better and way less complicated. Great work man! Also how do you do the “ travelling not more than half of the dia” !?
i guess it is nice to have that it can find "pin 0" but is this not totaly irrelevant since its a circle of pins and no matter were you start you get the same image in the end.
Great video! Have you thought of putting a rubber sheet on the base instead of rubber wheels to keep it quieter? It might be cheaper and require less rework.
As an alternative to finding hard rubber wheels, the ring on the base that the wheels ride on can be coated with a resilient compound, such as rubber roofing, or multiple coats of a latex paint. Or, sheet rubber can be cut into arcs to cover that ring, and contact cemented to the base.
Beautiful automation. A master weaver robot :D
So elegant and patient, a wonderful example in practice to learn from.
Well done, Barton!
This is a fascinating project. Thanks for sharing. That drill fixture is really cool.
this is so great. as soon as I saw it i was thinking "but how does he deal with the thread stacking up vertically?"... then i watched some more. "yeah, but... you can't just keep adding thread to the same nail over and over!"... watched some more. saw the nails at an angle. "oh man... that is a beautiful solution." Really love this. Thanks for sharing. Seems like we just need someone to write a program to convert into string art without using matlab!
Octave is an open source and most likely will execute on the .m files that are hosted. Worth giving it a shot.
How much
For the time lapse you might try having some sort of visual angle reference on the bed that is easily visible to a camera mounted directly above it. This way you could "rotate" the bed to the same index position in each photo essentially making the time lapse look like the machine is moving around the art. I think this would be very cool looking.
Well you know the angle of the bed right? Couldn't you just rotate the image in post?
@@Synthetica9 this would work fine too as long as you have a way to associate the angle to the image file. Having a mark on the bed that you simply rotate in post to the 12 o'clock position would probably be easier since you don't necessarily have to cross reference a list of files and angles.
However if you were controlling the camera from the same control board and if it has a little extra processing power, it could be trivial to take the photo, immediately run something like ImageMagik on it to rotate it using the angle from the bed controller as a parameter while your string art machine is laying down the next string. Rinse and repeat and your "post" processing is done around the same time as the artwork you would just need to run the rotated and cropped image stack through ffmpeg or something to make it into a video.
Just heard your interview!
All these builds are amazing!
As for the time lapse, you have the solution already built in!
Use the platter home switch to trigger the camera every time it spins past!
Or, give the edge holders a second bump
lower(or higher) then the home switch(as to not interfere), so you could trigger the camera:
When it passes home.
When it passes home and 180°from home.
Flip the upside down pictures in post.
Home, 120°, 240°, correct and align in post.
Or a picture every 60°, again rotating the pictures so they align properly in post.
Really well done. Fantastic build. I've never seen one of these machines before but, having hand created string back in the day, I find this technology fascinating.
Man, this project pleases my engineering-heart. So many clever solutions! Neatly done sir :D
This is legit one of the coolest things I have ever seen
Genius! Great project, from an even greater inventor!
Thx for sharing!
When I was young, I used to make such graphs by hand, and the whole neighbourship wanted to get one too!
Note to self: red 3D printed parts go great with steel, aluminum, and particle board.
Definitely. I bought some red spools lately and it appears those look great in that combo. I was worried I never had a project to use it for, but this is great.
i really wanted to watch this machine make a full piece of art from start to finish. the engineering is amazing but watching it work would have been the most satisfying part. good job.
as for the camera part i think you can use the limit switch thing which can find the zero and find the more repeated number in the pins, for example, pin number 144, then when ever it stops on the pin 144 code the cam to click on it. i think it may help, i am not a technical expert :)
yes - and if there’s too much of a gap between calls to pin 144, extra ones could be inserted to smooth out the time-lapse.
How about rotating the image by software? No need to drive to pin 0 first, which saves time. 🤔
@@carlc.4714idea is good, but it will take more time to process it, and I think the end result will be blurry
@@kevCarricooooh well thats a good idea 💡❤
I have rarely been so impressed by a UA-cam video.
Wow! It's so beautiful. Hey if you implement that timelapse feature, consider having the bed slowly spin during the time lapse!
From one DIY'er to another, this is very nice work!
Dude! So well documented, so well explained! And what a beautiful, complex machine!!!
so cool! Thanks for taking the time to explain your process and uploading!
7:47 have you thought about model railroad cork roadbed? its pretty sturdy, and is used in model railroads specifically to hold its position and shape without allowing the track to deform, while still providing sound deadening.
Nice! It would be cool if the time-lapse camera could rotate with the string art, so on the animation it looks as though the machine and the room is rotating round the image as its being created.
I agree, honestly that's a whole project in and of itself that's fairly non-trivial to make. I know there's an entire product designed for shooting videos of 3D printers while keeping the printing plate in the same location in frame so the build "grows smoothly" in time lapses.
Brilliant and amazing machinery and your concept is just as beautiful and amazing the pieces of art it creates
Thankyou for the inspiration. I did my electronics studies way back in the 80s and by a twist of fate found myself surfing the personal computer tsunami before moving on to programming. Things have moved on a ton since those days of discrete components. There were chips available of course but nothing compared to what we have now. As for machining and laser printing, well, a whole universe there.
My youngest son has finished his studies and will be moving out so I have a room I can work in undisturbed. In the meantime, I have some catching up to do I think. :)
Another interesting idea would be to make a printer that prints in a circle. The paper rotates on wheel and the print head goes left and right, but only half way across and the paper rotates after each row of pixels printed until the paper is full.
"i wanted to put my spin on the design" haha nice pun
Great work, big fan of your other projects!
would be intresting to "print" the negetive with white threat on a black canvas:)
love the project, great execution and design. 10/10 video.
keep it up and this channel will explode.
Well that's the quickest I have ever hit subscribe from a video. I didn't even finish watching it before I hit subscribe. I guess this video is about 4 years old, but it's the first of yours that I've seen. Now off to see what else you have!
Pretty ingenious. I wish Maker Bot and other 3D Printers and CNC-like kits were available when I was much younger. I would definitely been into it and would have liked to have created something like this rig. Very Cool.
it’s not too late!
What a weird excuse, being older does not prohibit you from doing anything man
one wonderful dimension of this string art, for me, is the contrast which such a medium can attain. I mean: the black can be *really* black, as the threads create a ‘colour’ which it is probably impossible to attain using paints, merely.
Clever and clean build, really incredible. Thank you
Oh man...such awesome CNC designs man...awesome!
This is amazing.... sorry it took me four years to find this video. Thanks for sharing.
Could consider it a wall mount, behind a display glass.
It would become an art piece, that makes art
Really enjoyed this, Bart! Would love to hear how it's developed since you launched the video.
Could you do a CMYK separation of the original image and then do 4 passes using 4 thread colors to stimulate a color printer? I'm thinking the number of threads used in each layer would need to be much less, but that the final result might look quite good.
I feel like you could do a timelapse with some decent image stabilization software, or you could take an image every time the threader moves and calculate the rotation manually. Though the threader would jump around, I think it'd still look pretty cool.
For the timelapse, I would mark one of the nails, and have a photosensor trigger a picture, whenever that nail passed by it.
Amazing work! Results looks really great!
Thats super nice !! great job in the design love it !!!
This is utterly daft ! I love it !
I've been inspired by your machine so I'm going to make my own. I am designing it for laser cutting. I played with a stepper motor for the first time I think I have that down now. Next I need to figure out the thread servo and feeder. I'll be using large thin rings of Teflon as an pseudo bearing.
Where did you get those nice nails? Amazon doesn't have any good options.
my winter project as soon as everythink is released,I see you have improved the coaster drawing machine maybe I will rebuild mine and get vit to work.
pretty cool build, you should try getting some white thread and dripping dye on it of various colors, then making a picture with it :) Also putting all your moving parts on rubber bushings can reduce the noise, and adding sound absorbing material to the back side of the base will cut some noise. The gears themselves can be noisy as well, going to a belt drive system is a great way to reduce even more noise.
Great work ... really great .. but where can i find the stls for it ?
We have a string machine discussion channel on our Discord server.
discord.gg/YZWJGm8RuM
How on earth this channel has only 6k subscribers! UA-cam needs to fix its algorithms to promote such channels! Very nice work mate.
I'm halfway through my build. Using a lot of things I had on hand, so it's a bit different. I'm using NEMA 23 + DSP driver but I'm using arduino just because that's what I'm familiar with. I found another picture to string converter written in python. It works really well and you can control iterations, number of nails, etc. It's output is a sequence of numbers corrosponding the the pin string should go to next. Wrote a pythons script to generate arduino commands to rotate to that particular radian using that text file. Not the best...may need to rethink this. I'm using a timing belt and timing gears from automation direct at about 4.5 to 1 gear ratio (that's the best I could do since I didn't have a 3d printer at the time). My set up is not perfect and seems to be off about a nail's width every 20 rotations or so. I guess that's why you used a limit switch? I'll have to do the same and programatically recalibrate every few rotations. So far so good. Thanks for the inspiration!
Hey man that sounds like an awsome build! I am looking into doing something similar. Did it work out in the end? If you could it would be really nice to share a short vid on youtube so that people can see your work and maybe do something similar! :D
Did it work out in the end?
@@OMGWTFBBQSHEEP still in progress. Life got in the way. Had it going, but it would drift a radian every 10 or so rotations. Need to install a limit switch that acts as calibration or get a nema motor that has encoding closed loop.
@@ClintRobison allright, thanks for the update! The struggle with actually finishing projects is a real one that i think many of us struggles with.. Sounds like you are not too far from having a finished project tho :D
what is the name of the flange that is put on the shaft of a stepper motor (2:39). Can you link to aliexpress or somewhere else?
Search for hubs at servocity.com
So nice Bart, im so thankfull for all your work. I used GRBL alot on many machines :)
Thank you for teaching us!
Thanks for making this Bart. Very awesome! I would really like to build this and I see at least one comment from a viewer who says he is building it. Have you published plans or stls for the machine itself? I see you published the Matlab algorithm (again, thank you) but I don't see any instructions for the machine itself outside of your video narration... Maybe I'm missing something?
Use a v-groove bearing with an o-ring wrapped around it. Simple cheap and easily replaced.
Very impressive.
And the description is very interesting.
Inspired by this awesome project, I am building the similar machine. My drilling fixture lacks sturdiness. Wondering if I could look into yours (open cad?).
And I’d love to share my project with you as it progresses.
Absolutely amazing
For the bearings acting as wheels, you could print some simple tpu tires for them. Just a mm thick and put on like a rubber band.
This is amazing work, a truly creative project.
I wonder if the algorithm to create straight string images on a circle is like a CT scan but in reverse.
mind blown, well done sir
Is there a place we can view the stl files for your prints?
Really excellent work.
I wager these pieces would look really slick encased in acrylic and removed from the back board (nails removed and edges sanded) all polished up and see-through.
Beautiful work!
Cool project.
Could you try this on a wood ring so you can backlight the image?
Wow!! Love this.
You could tie the camera timing to the zero position of the disc so everytime it passes zero it takes a picture or number of every full rotation of the disk.
Hey, instead of using rubber wheels, you can also try putting the bearings at a (almost) horizontal angle. It will dramatically decrease the noice, you can try it yourself by taking a bearing and running it perpendicular on a hard surface, and then try it alsmost liniar horizontal.
this. is. fascinating.
Is there any chance you can make a step by step tutorial?
Very nice project. Instead of rubber wheels you could try heat shrink tube around the bearings, maybe that's enough to make it less noisy.
Interesting look forward to seeing more
That’s great, thanks for sharing 👍
Nice! The time-lapse would work well if you apply rotational motion-tracking to the video to stabilize the art 👌
Wow. This is so
well thought out.
What is the shiled where you insert ESP32?
It is custom, but here is a list of all compatible hardware for ESP32 CNC
wiki.fluidnc.com/en/hardware/existing_hardware
I wonder if something like this can be used to string core memory.
Honestly my favorite part about this is hte turn table, since I was just wracking my brain for a way to do something very similar for the transverse axis of a home build telescope I'm working on that I want to get properly remote controlled with star tracking and the like.
man, engineers are awesome
Yes. I would like to see a time lapse of this.
AMAZING!! Certainly made my head spin ;D
The angled nails is so clever.
Awesome project! Thank you for sharing!
Pretty cool. Can u create one that can crochet? ❤
Incredible design. Nice work!
Makes me wonder what it would look like if you actually 3D printed the code for the string allowing 3D printer to lay down the thin lines. Perhaps intentionally printing a bit above the surface to allow lines printed to gravity fall so you don’t have to worry about z height for each strand?
Great video and project!
To accomplish the timelapse you just need the camera to rotate at the same rate as the turntable, it just has to be set above it on some sort of light stand.
Possible time-lapse design:
Mount a camera above design canvas, add markers to the brim of the canvas, after filming use the markers to stabilise the footage.
Could you embed a track of something rubberized into the table instead of searching for possibly difficult to find hard rubber wheels? Or maybe a flexible tape?
That is an option I am considering. Currently that piece is routed from the other side, so I would have to change a few things to keep it a single sided cut.
Dosen't surprise me that you've already thought of that :)
Applying heatshrink over bearings is something I've done before. Works pretty good.
An elegant build and expertly crafted. Well done sir. Have you considered a version that does the drawing in sand - like a pendulum?
I think if you shoot from directly above and the lighting is very even (ring flash around the camera and blackout the room) you can have the time lapse run through a video stabilizing software and have it fixed that way.
Sheesh you’re smart. Great video! I imagine you could try to make this art more permanent with resin; it might look cool too. For some reason I want a one of these string art discs as a form of a picture of my passed father.
I have been working on a cnc format type machine for a similar application but this rotating platter is much better and way less complicated. Great work man! Also how do you do the “ travelling not more than half of the dia” !?
Amazing Machine! Would you please share the detail list of used equipment and devices with us?
really amazing ... *thumbs up
My comment is simply that this s a quite brilliantly conceived and executed project. I would live to be your neighbour, we would have such fun!
This is crazy good, your so clever. How is it looking now,
3 years down the line.
i guess it is nice to have that it can find "pin 0" but is this not totaly irrelevant since its a circle of pins and no matter were you start you get the same image in the end.
Great video! Have you thought of putting a rubber sheet on the base instead of rubber wheels to keep it quieter? It might be cheaper and require less rework.
Impressive! Loved the concept and execution. How did you get the nails in? By hand and a small hammer? Did you use any glue?
Are The crosssections and triangles a must in The picture or could it be omitted?
Hello there. Can you share the machine parts files? Will you share the detailed video of machine making?