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The plan is to use 3d printers, Servo motors, an arduino, and some mediocre computer code to fully automate an antique typewriter from the 1950’s with the sole intention of creating ASCII art from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Why? Because the irony of the whole project just screams art, but then it also outputs art making it even more ironic, which makes it scream even more Art. Hard project to pass up.

From the engineering perspective, this is a mechatronics project, which means it requires mechanical, electronic, and software engineering. This video documents the project and is broken up into 4 distinct parts:

1:42 Mechanical design process
10:15 Electronics process
11:15 Software Engineering process
15:25 The Art Creation Process (if you’re only going to watch one part, watch this)

The mechanical design ended up using rack and pinions for the xaxis, yaxis, typing fingers, and return carriage. I chose to use servo motors as actuators for each segment in an attempt to make the electronics and software development easier. It definitely made organizing the wires much easier, but led to complications down the road. I used the Arduino ide to write the firmware for this robot, and Processing to write the software. It was cobbled together code, but fortunately, the machine ran quite well and I was able to produce some amazing ASCII art in the process!

If you would like to help support this channel and the creation of bigger, better engineering/art projects, check out my Patreon here:
Patreon.com/engineezy

If you would like to see my whole collection of work, check out my Instagram:
Instagram.com/engineezy

As always, check out my website if you would like to purchase any of my downloadable files for 3D print: engineezy.com