Has anyone tried to turn their printer into a pen plotter?

I had recently stumbled across a video of a cnc pen plotter and thought it would be cool (and hopefully not hard) to try and make my printer easily adaptable between the two. I was wondering if anyone else has attempted this and what results I can expect.

To convert it, I was thinking about adding a pen mount to the extruder carriage then making the pen extend down past the tip of the extruder. I have not looked at the firmware yet but was hoping to keep my firmware the same and simply use something like replicatorg to generate the pen movements. I do not want to make it unable to print plastic parts in 3D but would like to add to the versatility of my machine. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[www.thingiverse.com]

There are quite a few different variations and a few videos about attaching a pen/pencil to a RepRap.

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My Reprap blog

jds-reprap.blogspot.com

Take a look at some of the calibration "plots" we did when we first got our machine set up, check out SeeMeCNC Imgaes and look for the paper plots. These were done with mach3 as the control, but you could hand write some g-code, or there are many ways to make the g-code that I think would work.

John

Here's a video I made the other week. I just mounted a pen on my dial indicator.
[www.youtube.com]

To generate gcode I use a slightly hacked version of this to do z moves instead the unicorn servo movements.
[www.thingiverse.com]

It's actually more than a gimmick. I plot out a grid and calibrate my printer's squareness with it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 10:30AM by billyzelsnack.

Thanks! This is what I was looking for.