This used to be an old, broken 3D printer. It was donated to MakerClub by the MME department, with the end goal of letting any club member use it as a CNC base for their projects.

To prepare the device for club use, I removed the broken heating element and replaced the microcontroller and motor drivers. The X, Y and Z axes are now controllable by sending serial commands from a laptop to an Arduino.

As a case study for the club's prototyping workshop, I added two movement axes to the CNC and turned it into a watercolor painting robot. The rotation is controlled by a stepper motor, and the swing is controlled by a servo. I also built a new base out of laser-cut acrylic, and wrote a GUI for telling the robot what to draw.