3 dimensional drafting pen

Inspiration

3d computer aided drafting for art and engineering could greatly benefit from having an intuitive digital interface for working in these spaces

How it works

Three retractable spools of thread record the distance from the pen tip to each spool by means of magnetic encoding of angular position. These three lengths map uniquely to the 3d space above the spools and thus triangulate the position.

Challenges I ran into

Encoding angular position manually, I.e. with a custom build setup, which includes building an encoded wheel, a sensing module, and deducing drive logic in order to measure angle, or equivalently distance

Making 3d cad software to interface with

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Making three working, although crude, modules than can all be read simultaneously via arduino to a computer with their angular position

What I learned

To make such an involved hardware hack, it would help to have more planning and better materials ready to build with, so that there isn't so much kludgey debugging and runs to the hardware store

What's next for 3 dimensional drafting pen

The next iteration of encoded spools with much higher resolution for fine movement tracking, to design an ergonomic casing for the whole device, and to add button functionality.

Built With

• arduino
• hall-effect-sensors
• sparkfun
• stanely-measures