A New Spin on String Art Machines

[@BrightBlueJim]

As an alternative to finding hard rubber wheels, the ring on the base that the wheels ride on can be coated with a resilient compound, such as rubber roofing, or multiple coats of a latex paint. Or, sheet rubber can be cut into arcs to cover that ring, and contact cemented to the base.

[@stimpy5067]

For the time lapse you might try having some sort of visual angle reference on the bed that is easily visible to a camera mounted directly above it. This way you could "rotate" the bed to the same index position in each photo essentially making the time lapse look like the machine is moving around the art. I think this would be very cool looking.

[@Synthetica9]

Well you know the angle of the bed right? Couldn't you just rotate the image in post?

[@stimpy5067]

@@Synthetica9 this would work fine too as long as you have a way to associate the angle to the image file. Having a mark on the bed that you simply rotate in post to the 12 o'clock position would probably be easier since you don't necessarily have to cross reference a list of files and angles.
However if you were controlling the camera from the same control board and if it has a little extra processing power, it could be trivial to take the photo, immediately run something like ImageMagik on it to rotate it using the angle from the bed controller as a parameter while your string art machine is laying down the next string. Rinse and repeat and your "post" processing is done around the same time as the artwork you would just need to run the rotated and cropped image stack through ffmpeg or something to make it into a video.

[@FrankGraffagnino]

this is so great. as soon as I saw it i was thinking "but how does he deal with the thread stacking up vertically?"... then i watched some more. "yeah, but... you can't just keep adding thread to the same nail over and over!"... watched some more. saw the nails at an angle. "oh man... that is a beautiful solution." Really love this. Thanks for sharing. Seems like we just need someone to write a program to convert into string art without using matlab!

[@halftonhero]

Octave is an open source and most likely will execute on the .m files that are hosted. Worth giving it a shot.

[@widiawati9299]

How much

[@Tr3bu]

Just heard your interview!
All these builds are amazing!
As for the time lapse, you have the solution already built in!
Use the platter home switch to trigger the camera every time it spins past!
Or, give the edge holders a second bump
lower(or higher) then the home switch(as to not interfere), so you could trigger the camera:
When it passes home.
When it passes home and 180°from home.
Flip the upside down pictures in post.
Home, 120°, 240°, correct and align in post.
Or a picture every 60°, again rotating the pictures so they align properly in post.

[@xef6]

Beautiful automation. A master weaver robot :D
So elegant and patient, a wonderful example in practice to learn from.
Well done, Barton!

[@BrightBlueJim]

Note to self: red 3D printed parts go great with steel, aluminum, and particle board.

[@MarinusMakesStuff]

Definitely. I bought some red spools lately and it appears those look great in that combo. I was worried I never had a project to use it for, but this is great.

[@febinroy2289]

as for the camera part i think you can use the limit switch thing which can find the zero and find the more repeated number in the pins, for example, pin number 144, then when ever it stops on the pin 144 code the cam to click on it. i think it may help, i am not a technical expert :)

[@kevCarrico]

yes - and if there’s too much of a gap between calls to pin 144, extra ones could be inserted to smooth out the time-lapse.

[@carlc.4714]

How about rotating the image by software? No need to drive to pin 0 first, which saves time. 🤔

[@febinroy2289]

​@@carlc.4714idea is good, but it will take more time to process it, and I think the end result will be blurry

[@febinroy2289]

​@@kevCarricooooh well thats a good idea 💡❤

[@MichaelMcClelland1]

This is a fascinating project. Thanks for sharing. That drill fixture is really cool.

[@HotspotsSoutheast]

Another interesting idea would be to make a printer that prints in a circle. The paper rotates on wheel and the print head goes left and right, but only half way across and the paper rotates after each row of pixels printed until the paper is full.

[@oddlyaccessible1700]

i really wanted to watch this machine make a full piece of art from start to finish. the engineering is amazing but watching it work would have been the most satisfying part. good job.

[@rmschindler144]

one wonderful dimension of this string art, for me, is the contrast which such a medium can attain. I mean: the black can be *really* black, as the threads create a ‘colour’ which it is probably impossible to attain using paints, merely.

[@pvere3246]

Nice! It would be cool if the time-lapse camera could rotate with the string art, so on the animation it looks as though the machine and the room is rotating round the image as its being created.

[@kentonyc]

I agree, honestly that's a whole project in and of itself that's fairly non-trivial to make. I know there's an entire product designed for shooting videos of 3D printers while keeping the printing plate in the same location in frame so the build "grows smoothly" in time lapses.

[@TheNormalUniverse]

Wow! It's so beautiful. Hey if you implement that timelapse feature, consider having the bed slowly spin during the time lapse!

[@jobum1481]

Genius! Great project, from an even greater inventor!
Thx for sharing!
When I was young, I used to make such graphs by hand, and the whole neighbourship wanted to get one too!

[@PhilJonesIII]

Thankyou for the inspiration. I did my electronics studies way back in the 80s and by a twist of fate found myself surfing the personal computer tsunami before moving on to programming. Things have moved on a ton since those days of discrete components. There were chips available of course but nothing compared to what we have now. As for machining and laser printing, well, a whole universe there.
My youngest son has finished his studies and will be moving out so I have a room I can work in undisturbed. In the meantime, I have some catching up to do I think. :)

[@nemesis851_]

Could consider it a wall mount, behind a display glass.
It would become an art piece, that makes art

[@SnowTiger45]

Pretty ingenious. I wish Maker Bot and other 3D Printers and CNC-like kits were available when I was much younger. I would definitely been into it and would have liked to have created something like this rig. Very Cool.

[@ScreechingBagel]

it’s not too late!

[@dundeedideley1773]

What a weird excuse, being older does not prohibit you from doing anything man

[@BongoWongoOG]

Really well done. Fantastic build. I've never seen one of these machines before but, having hand created string back in the day, I find this technology fascinating.

[@69dblcab]

Use a v-groove bearing with an o-ring wrapped around it. Simple cheap and easily replaced.

[@OMGWTFBBQSHEEP]

Man, this project pleases my engineering-heart. So many clever solutions! Neatly done sir :D

[@alldoitthesame]

I feel like you could do a timelapse with some decent image stabilization software, or you could take an image every time the threader moves and calculate the rotation manually. Though the threader would jump around, I think it'd still look pretty cool.

[@badsamaritan8223]

For the timelapse, I would mark one of the nails, and have a photosensor trigger a picture, whenever that nail passed by it.

[@jtms1200]

This is legit one of the coolest things I have ever seen

[@agvulpine]

I wager these pieces would look really slick encased in acrylic and removed from the back board (nails removed and edges sanded) all polished up and see-through.

[@KrisKasprzak]

From one DIY'er to another, this is very nice work!

[@PendragonDaGreat]

Honestly my favorite part about this is hte turn table, since I was just wracking my brain for a way to do something very similar for the transverse axis of a home build telescope I'm working on that I want to get properly remote controlled with star tracking and the like.

[@clintrobison4454]

I'm halfway through my build. Using a lot of things I had on hand, so it's a bit different. I'm using NEMA 23 + DSP driver but I'm using arduino just because that's what I'm familiar with. I found another picture to string converter written in python. It works really well and you can control iterations, number of nails, etc. It's output is a sequence of numbers corrosponding the the pin string should go to next. Wrote a pythons script to generate arduino commands to rotate to that particular radian using that text file. Not the best...may need to rethink this. I'm using a timing belt and timing gears from automation direct at about 4.5 to 1 gear ratio (that's the best I could do since I didn't have a 3d printer at the time). My set up is not perfect and seems to be off about a nail's width every 20 rotations or so. I guess that's why you used a limit switch? I'll have to do the same and programatically recalibrate every few rotations. So far so good. Thanks for the inspiration!

[@OMGWTFBBQSHEEP]

Hey man that sounds like an awsome build! I am looking into doing something similar. Did it work out in the end? If you could it would be really nice to share a short vid on youtube so that people can see your work and maybe do something similar! :D

[@PipicoClips]

Did it work out in the end?

[@ClintRobison]

@@OMGWTFBBQSHEEP still in progress. Life got in the way. Had it going, but it would drift a radian every 10 or so rotations. Need to install a limit switch that acts as calibration or get a nema motor that has encoding closed loop.

[@OMGWTFBBQSHEEP]

@@ClintRobison allright, thanks for the update! The struggle with actually finishing projects is a real one that i think many of us struggles with.. Sounds like you are not too far from having a finished project tho :D

[@MikeSenese]

Really enjoyed this, Bart! Would love to hear how it's developed since you launched the video.

[@GoingtoHecq]

For the bearings acting as wheels, you could print some simple tpu tires for them. Just a mm thick and put on like a rubber band.

[@matthewdunstone4431]

I have rarely been so impressed by a RUclips video.

[@luukbreggeman3433]

Hey, instead of using rubber wheels, you can also try putting the bearings at a (almost) horizontal angle. It will dramatically decrease the noice, you can try it yourself by taking a bearing and running it perpendicular on a hard surface, and then try it alsmost liniar horizontal.

[@phoebebaker1575]

Dude! So well documented, so well explained! And what a beautiful, complex machine!!!

[@nickademuss42]

pretty cool build, you should try getting some white thread and dripping dye on it of various colors, then making a picture with it :) Also putting all your moving parts on rubber bushings can reduce the noise, and adding sound absorbing material to the back side of the base will cut some noise. The gears themselves can be noisy as well, going to a belt drive system is a great way to reduce even more noise.

[@humanthetooth]

so cool! Thanks for taking the time to explain your process and uploading!

[@nancyallen8497]

Brilliant and amazing machinery and your concept is just as beautiful and amazing the pieces of art it creates

[@tinu5779]

Very nice project. Instead of rubber wheels you could try heat shrink tube around the bearings, maybe that's enough to make it less noisy.

[@JulienCope]

"i wanted to put my spin on the design" haha nice pun
Great work, big fan of your other projects!

[@walterhynson2898]

my winter project as soon as everythink is released,I see you have improved the coaster drawing machine maybe I will rebuild mine and get vit to work.

[@benaloney]

Nice! The time-lapse would work well if you apply rotational motion-tracking to the video to stabilize the art 👌

[@LincolnWorld]

Well that's the quickest I have ever hit subscribe from a video. I didn't even finish watching it before I hit subscribe. I guess this video is about 4 years old, but it's the first of yours that I've seen. Now off to see what else you have!

[@alessandrobenanti3129]

Clever and clean build, really incredible. Thank you

[@bobawender9647]

You could tie the camera timing to the zero position of the disc so everytime it passes zero it takes a picture or number of every full rotation of the disk.

[@TadRichard]

Could you do a CMYK separation of the original image and then do 4 passes using 4 thread colors to stimulate a color printer? I'm thinking the number of threads used in each layer would need to be much less, but that the final result might look quite good.

[@capincrnchy]

This is amazing.... sorry it took me four years to find this video. Thanks for sharing.

[@robertking6780]

Thanks for making this Bart. Very awesome! I would really like to build this and I see at least one comment from a viewer who says he is building it. Have you published plans or stls for the machine itself? I see you published the Matlab algorithm (again, thank you) but I don't see any instructions for the machine itself outside of your video narration... Maybe I'm missing something?

[@ComiXDude]

love the project, great execution and design. 10/10 video.
keep it up and this channel will explode.

[@boredotter]

Possible time-lapse design:
Mount a camera above design canvas, add markers to the brim of the canvas, after filming use the markers to stabilise the footage.

[@13squared2009]

To accomplish the timelapse you just need the camera to rotate at the same rate as the turntable, it just has to be set above it on some sort of light stand.

[@haydenc2742]

Oh man...such awesome CNC designs man...awesome!

[@rickharriss]

Tip - Super glue a rubber band around your bearings - Instant rubber wheel.

[@superargo4701]

Glue down with contact cement, a rubber strip (scavenged from a bicycle innertube) on the table that the bearing rollers ride on. Rolling noise should be deattenuated.

[@OppaYA]

Amazing work! Results looks really great!

[@ultraflightamerica9019]

7:47 have you thought about model railroad cork roadbed? its pretty sturdy, and is used in model railroads specifically to hold its position and shape without allowing the track to deform, while still providing sound deadening.

[@hannesskirgard]

I have an idea for an other project. Do a gravel sorter by color and make art with it. A robot thats take a picture of a gravel and at the right spot. A second idea would be to 3d scan rocks and place them so when the sun hits just right art is visible.

[@Koodie2]

So nice Bart, im so thankfull for all your work. I used GRBL alot on many machines :)

[@DarcyWhyte]

If you want to do a timelapse, here's a solution.
Place the camera on a rotating shaft that's above the machine. The rotating shaft should be on the same axis as the rotating platter.
Drive the rotating camera with a stepper. Put the stepper on the same controller as the one driving the platter so it stays in sync with the platter.

[@joppepeelen]

Thats super nice !! great job in the design love it !!!

[@dundeedideley1773]

I think if you shoot from directly above and the lighting is very even (ring flash around the camera and blackout the room) you can have the time lapse run through a video stabilizing software and have it fixed that way.

[@eliasveselsky790]

would be intresting to "print" the negetive with white threat on a black canvas:)

[@firkyunbanaya]

man, engineers are awesome

[@user-nf5ld4ul6p]

Amazing Machine! Would you please share the detail list of used equipment and devices with us?

[@vitaliyartemenko3489]

Hello.Please tell me how to contact you? would like to talk about string art machine. my mail : [e-mail]

[@mick2935]

I know i'm late to the party but the rubber of LEGO-wheels put on an bearing should reduce noice significantely. Thx to the algorithm for suggesting this

[@3amali1]

How on earth this channel has only 6k subscribers! RUclips needs to fix its algorithms to promote such channels! Very nice work mate.

[@geor664]

Fantastic project.
Rather than use rubber wheels that will inevitably wear out. You could consider using damping material and damping mounts to the sections acting as a sounding board. That gives you more robust mechanics and reduced vibrational noise. Look at Getzner polyurathane material and request sample pack
Have you considered running Octave rather than Matlab. Octave is compatible with Matlab language.
Otherwise consider Matlab to Python translators then Cython interpreter to compiled code conversion for speed ups.
I look forward to the next video of your work

[@mujtaba1]

This is amazing work, a truly creative project.

[@ChrisBallProjects]

Beautiful work!

[@himanshugulia418]

I have been working on a cnc format type machine for a similar application but this rotating platter is much better and way less complicated. Great work man! Also how do you do the “ travelling not more than half of the dia” !?

[@ZerofeverOfficial]

this. is. fascinating.

[@chriselliott726]

My comment is simply that this s a quite brilliantly conceived and executed project. I would live to be your neighbour, we would have such fun!

[@Hexalobular]

Very impressive.
And the description is very interesting.

[@transientaardvark6231]

Instead of rotating to a fixed position to take a photo (which as you say potentially raises problems with thread tension, and would definitely slow it down) you could try recording the position (or just extract it from the input data) at each "operation" and use a script to rotate the image the relevant amount. It's not like there is machine gubbins moving in and out of shot like a 3D printer.

[@HamidBazargani]

Inspired by this awesome project, I am building the similar machine. My drilling fixture lacks sturdiness. Wondering if I could look into yours (open cad?).
And I’d love to share my project with you as it progresses.

[@josh-sheldon]

The angled nails is so clever.

[@jbumstead21]

Incredible design. Nice work!

[@tahwnikcufos]

I looked through the comments... not one person in 4 years mentioned using heat shrink tubing to turn the bearings into rubber like wheels.

[@Andreas-gh6is]

Another new spin on this idea: Use arbitrary pin placements, not just a circle. Would require something like a 3D printer or CNC platform.

[@Juksemakeren]

3d printed gears always grind my gears - think of the particles!

[@Excalibur32]

Awesome project! Thank you for sharing!

[@rayrous8229]

Yes. I would like to see a time lapse of this.

[@bowieinc]

Makes me wonder what it would look like if you actually 3D printed the code for the string allowing 3D printer to lay down the thin lines. Perhaps intentionally printing a bit above the surface to allow lines printed to gravity fall so you don’t have to worry about z height for each strand?
Great video and project!

[@hijelhub]

Great work! Thanks for sharing.

[@HaloBalla]

Sheesh you’re smart. Great video! I imagine you could try to make this art more permanent with resin; it might look cool too. For some reason I want a one of these string art discs as a form of a picture of my passed father.

[@tortysoft]

This is utterly daft ! I love it !

[@thanhnhanhuynhnguyen3652]

Thank you for teaching us!

[@GHILLIESARCADEANDMORE]

Interesting look forward to seeing more

[@The_Allstar]

Wow. This is so
well thought out.

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

Do the timelapse thing, but rotate the platter between shots, so you get a spinning timelapse :D

[@miron__]

You could also sync it up with the gcode, and just rotate the image in post

[@o0shad0oo]

Now you need to automate nail insertion.

[@harrismagnum04]

mind blown, well done sir

[@N3GKID]

Fantastic create with print 3d

[@tomcarroll6744]

Really excellent work.

[@Drawliphant]

Time lapse: take a picture every time the limit switch hits the zero pin.

[@Flemmi]

i guess it is nice to have that it can find "pin 0" but is this not totaly irrelevant since its a circle of pins and no matter were you start you get the same image in the end.

[@vincentmontgomery7189]

AMAZING!! Certainly made my head spin ;D

[@TheMason76]

really amazing ... *thumbs up

[@spiceowlfpv3506]

Great work ... really great .. but where can i find the stls for it ?

[@engserve]

We have a string machine discussion channel on our Discord server.
discord.gg/YZWJGm8RuM

[@nguyenkhanh845]

Very Good! I want a video on how to do it! Thank you very much!

[@scruffy3121]

for the timelapse Mount a webcam to the rotating bed.

[@oregomm]

Fantastic work! thanks for sharing

[@mikehibbett3301]

Aresome design, thanks!