Drawing and Plotting Head

Introduction

A drawing and plotting head may be an excellent second head to produce. It actually requires fewer boards than the extruder (none) and can actually be used for something very useful. It can draw with any number of pens, markers, and brushes. This can be for pure aesthetics or for more practical purposes like drawing on etch resist with a commonly available marker.

In using an etch resist marker, it would eliminate the step of toner transfer and make the machine a bit more self replicating. It could also easily fabricate a board etching machine to agitate and heat the etch solution. Simply print the board design on the board, pop it in the etch container, wait 15 minutes, new pcb ready for drilling.

Did i mention drilling? Because a Mill / Drill Head attachment would be really handy for automatically drilling pcb holes. Thats how the big boys do it.

-- ZachSmith - 11 Feb 2007

Etch Resist Toolhead

Greenarrow has made an etch resist marker toolhead and the software to plot Gerber files. His experiments are described here:
http://builders.reprap.org/2008/04/plotting-gerber-files.html

-- EnriquePerez - 14 Aug 2008

Universal Pen Holder and Touch Probe Toolhead

Here are the constructional details for a very inexpensive, universal pen holder and touch probe.

-- AndyKirby - 29 Aug 2008
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