Computer controlled paintbrush gizmo up and running as of 30 minutes ago!!!

Parts for airbrush assembly – the airbrush itself is just above the angle iron with the solenoid already installed. Solenoid plunger above it, little bent aluminum airbrush retaining clips above airbrush – the angle iron gets bolted into the aluminum pipe and holds the airbrush vertically in the center of the pipe – the plastic pipe shims the assembly out to proper dimension for my holder… Ink/paint bottle at left and “Z” clip to keep the plunger from falling out is next to plunger – it’s a damned simple solution given how long it’s taken me to figure out!

Parts for airbrush assembly – the airbrush itself is just above the angle iron with the solenoid already installed. Solenoid plunger above it, little bent aluminum airbrush retaining clips above airbrush – the angle iron gets bolted into the aluminum pipe and holds the airbrush vertically in the center of the pipe – the plastic pipe shims the assembly out to proper dimension for my holder… Ink/paint bottle at left and “Z” clip to keep the plunger from falling out is next to plunger – it’s a damned simple solution given how long it’s taken me to figure out!

The new paintbrush assembly almost ready for installation!

The completed assembly (minus ink bottle) is mounted in machine – the interface board came from ShopBot – it’s very simple board with five relays driven from program controlled outputs in the ShopBot controller (the ribbon cable you see accordion-folded runs from top of the board over the cable umbilical of the machine and into the main ShopBot control box… I use only one of the relays (and 24v power from the controller) to energize and deenergize my little solenoid which pushes the button on the airbrush…

I mounted the relay board onto the Z-axis of the ShopBot in a little plexi box I built this afternoon – the box should keep the board clean when I’m routing instead of painting… The cover is open at the bottom and just slides down over the plexi back in some nicely fitted grooves in the sides of the cover. You can see the brush assembly mounted into the machine at the bottom of this photo.

Here’s a view of the business-end of the assembly neatly mounted in the machine

The air hose has a quick-release at each end so it’ll be a snap to change over from painting to drawing to routing – but I’m going to need to build a 2nd generation drawing control to fit the relay board the same way and using a 24v continuous duty solenoid which I now have on hand instead of the intermittent duty 110v solenoid I used for the previous two drawings (and melted one of the coils in the process, unfortunately – that won’t happen again once I’ve converted over to the 24v device – and I won’t have to worry about 110v finding its way into the delicate electronics (or my delicate body, either)…

You can see the 24v solenoid wires (white wires) about 1/3 up from bottom left, and solenoid plunger on button of airbrush and black air hose coming in from right… Since it works in reverse of pen-lifter, I have to program a new converter before I can use it (the pen solenoid got powered when it was to STOP drawing – the brush gets powered when it is to PAINT, so my old program is reversed and I need to make a simple change in order to generate the proper code for the new airbrush… Should be testing with actual paint tomorrow!!! YIPPEE!!! But… The thing does actually WORK right now, the computer turning the airbrush off and on with command, so I’m ready to go!!!

January 24, 2007:

Yesterday and today I’ve been experimenting with the new computer controlled painting device and the results are encouraging — a few interesting problems (maybe these will turn out to be ‘characteristics’) which I hope to resolve, but — well, see for yourself (about 1 minute movie):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttc3Fd8akhA

dilute India ink spiral test with my finger for scale

concentric circles with splashes

concentric circle tests overlapped