Technocamps 2018
The brief was to create a robot using LEGO Mindstorms that could produce art or music. The team decided to create a 3-axis printer that could place 2x2 LEGO bricks onto a plate.
Overview
As part of the 2018 Technocamps competition, Team Lighting build a LEGO 3D Printer out of Technic pieces for the main project. The theme for the 2018 year was Art & Music. In the live challenge, teams would have to change or build a new robot in an hour that could represent Technocamps. The team adapted the 3D Printer into a printer on wheels, that was successfully able to write “TECHNO” on a piece of paper before time ran out. This ultimately won the team first place in the Live Challenge, earning themselves keyrings, certificates, and an Arduino kit for the robotics club.
The Software
The EV3 Brick simply read coordinates from 3 .rtf files that would contain all the model data. However at the time of the event, we had to hard code 3D-arrays of models we wanted to build. This is what inspired me to create this software.
After the competiton, we rebuilt the printer which was more accurate and stronger. It uses the LEGO tracks on the print bed rather than using string, so it is similar to a real 3D Printer with the rubber belt.
Read more about the software here.