Category Archives: CNC

AxiDraw on t-shirts

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We’ve seen a bunch of posts about using AxiDraw for fabric lately!

Fabric makers and sharpies are both making appearances.

Previously:

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Wooden signs with AxiDraw

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Jonathan sent in pictures of these wooden signs he made with his AxiDraw.

He shared some tips as well:

  • Put plastic wrap over the surface to test font, spacing, and size.
  • For polyurethane and lacquered finishes, if you make mistake with a permanent marker, write over your mistake with a dry erase marker and it comes right off.

It is awesome to see people taking advantage of AxiDraw’s ability to draw on different surface materials. Thank you, Jonathan!

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AxiDraw, JavaScript, and Generative Art

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Matt DesLauriers published a two-part blog post, Pen Plotter Art & Algorithms exploring his JavaScript workflow with AxiDraw and generative art.

Unlike a typical printer, a plotter produces prints with a strangely human quality: occasional imperfections arise as the pen catches an edge or momentarily dries up, and the quality of the ink has the subtle texture and emboss that you normally only see in an original drawing.

He has also posted his source code on github for the articles.

Part 1 covers getting started and explores Delaunay triangulation. Part 2 delves deeper into developing algorithms.

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Plotter Portraits

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Plotter art portrait drawn by Jojo the robot

A couple of creative artists, Makio&Floz, are offering custom plotted portraits, drawn by their AxiDraw, playfully named Jojo the robot.

Makio&Floz is a duo working on digital based projects. Without limiting themselves to a virtual space or a physical one, their goal is to explore design and generative art using code as a pencil.

You can upload a photo, preview the “Plottrait”, and order your own custom generative art piece.

Plotter portrait in progress

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Using the WaterColorBot to teach programming

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Water color painting titled Ocean Woman
JR has been volunteering in a high school programming class and wrote up a thoughtful post about his experiences using the WaterColorBot in the classroom. He wrote a Python library that allows users to directly control a WaterColorBot by writing Python code.

To be honest, this library is a pretty insane way to control the bot. It’s needlessly low-level: you’re manually controlling the brush’s position, you’ve got to remember to wash and re-ink the brush every so often, etc. If your main goal is to just get the bot to paint a pretty picture, there are lots of better ways to go about it.

As a teaching aid, though, it’s been a total success, because it lets students flex their burgeoning Python skills and actually make a real thing in the process! We’ve been blown away by the stuff our students have created.

He has also documented and shared his code on github.

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AxiDraw on Stage

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In unusual uses for our drawing machines, AxiDraw is playing the role of the master of ceremony in Joël Maillard’s play “Last sheet (after the big lack)”, a production about the robotic future being put on by Theater Marie in Switzerland.

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AxiDraw and TouchDesigner

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We’ve noticed a few artists on twitter and instagram using TouchDesigner as a tool in their workflow toward creating output with AxiDraw.


David Braun has been posting beautiful, and sometimes mindbending artwork on twitter.


Chris Hall posted this piece using sound waves to create scenes.

Some like it plot . . . . . #inktober #axidraw #touchdesigner

A post shared by Hard Work Party (@hardworkparty) on


Noah Norman has been posting geometric plotting videos.

#axidraw #touchdesigner

A post shared by Matthew Ragan (@raganmd) on


Matthew Ragan has been taking advantage AxiDraw’s ability to draw on just about anything, and plotting over already printed materials. He also has published his tools on github for getting vectors out of TouchDesign. He describes it as:

A pipeline for handling the SOP to SVG pipeline. This is especially handy for using procedurally generated geometry for paths to be cut or plotted.

We’ve added a link to his repository on the AxiDraw documentation wiki. We love it when folks share their tools and would love to hear what tools and processes people are using or creating for working with our plotters.

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