Artist Jeff Leonard has created a pair of fantastic Arduino powered CNC painting machines with the aim of combining both formal elements of painting with the modern day CNC computing and programming available using Arduino hardware.
The CNC painting machine consists of a 5 x 7 inch print bed and is capable of producing pieces of art up to 4 x 5 inches in size. Tools used by the robot include : a Beugler pinstriping paint wheel, a brush with a peristaltic pump syringe feed, an airbrush with a 5 colour paint feed system and 5 peristaltic pumps from Adafruit, a squeegee, and pencils, pens, markers and other drawing and painting utensils.
I am coding directly into the Arduino. There are many different codes that I call and overlap and use as a painter overlaps techniques and ideas. There is a lot of random built into the code, I don’t know what the end result will be when I start. Typically on any kind of CNC machining the end result has been made in the computer and the machine executes the instructions. I am building a kind of visual synthesizer that I can control in real-time. There are many buttons and potentiometers that I am controlling while the routines are running. I take any marks or accidents that happen and learn how to incorporate them into a painting.
For more information on the new CNC painitng robot jump over to the official Arduino website for details via the link below.
Source: Arduino
