Category: Makelangelo

Makelangelo

Tips to quiet your Makelangelo

2026-06-02 Dan

The song of the Makelangelo should be beautiful, not annoying. Normally stepper motors moving quickly will produce musical tones. Over time a person can learn to recognize good sounds and bad sounds from the machine. In a perfect world the machine would make no sound at all, but the best we can hope for in the real world is to minimize the bad sounds to enjoy the good ones. Here’s a few tips to make your Makelangelo sing.

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Makelangelo Opinion

Should I make a Makelangelo 6?

2026-04-24 Dan

Due to circumstances beyond my control Makelangelo 5 parts will soon no longer be available to me. I’m debating if I should invest in a Makelangelo 6 design or not. What are your thoughts?

The RUMBA control board used for many years is no longer available from any of my suppliers. I have found a few on Aliexpress at a grossly inflated price. Since they’re no longer reliable I’ve found a possible replacement, the SKR MINI E3. For the same price as the old RUMBA I can get a full color TFT screen, better drivers, and use less parts in the final design.

This is a great opportunity to update the pen holder. Imagine removing the hobby servo and using the same stepper motor as the top corners. Reducing my unique part count is a Good Thing. The added weight of the motor means I may be able to remove the two M16 bolts, further lowering my total part count. Fine grain control of the pen lifting speed would make for better line endings, less bouncing off the wall, and shorter drawing time overall.

But what about this economy? Is it even worth doing in a new Great Depression? It’s fun to make the robot as a hobby but also distracting enough that I can’t really start on anything new. There’s only so much time in every day. I would love to give the whole business to one of my nephews but I don’t trust that they care enough to do it right.

Share your positive adult thoughts in the Discord.

Art In the News Makelangelo

Friday Facts 18: New Makelangelo generators

2023-09-22 Dan

The Makelangelo plotters software is always getting improvements and today I’d like to share some of the latest with you. As of today the last official release of Makelangelo Software is 7.37. But did you know that exciting work is always going on in the discussion group? Hot new stuff is being added all the time. We’re up to version 7.44. Here’s a list of changes.

  • Firmware can now be updated from every platform
  • Added image intensity to height converter
  • Added Quadtree-like instant filter
  • Added Circular mazes
  • Added Honeycomb mazes
  • Added more Truchet Tiles
  • Misc other fixes

Firmware can now be updated from every platform

OSX proved to be quite challenging. But it was worth it if it makes everyone’s life easier going forward. Firmware changes are rare and now they are that much less painful. So now when the code in the brain of the robot is changed you won’t have to jump through a lot of hoops. Instead you can use File > Update firmware and follow the prompts.

Added image intensity to height converter

The change in height of each line is affected by the intensity of the underlying image. Line spacing and line offset are adjustable from the menus.

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Added Quadtree-like instant filter

Contributed by itsMohammedThaier. Starting from the whole picture, divide the rectangle in 4 quadrants. if the chnage in color over a quadrant is too much, split this quadrant and repeat.

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Added Circular mazes

What’s not to love? Being randomly generated from a depth-first search, I’m pretty sure there are sometimes two ways to solve each maze.

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Added Honeycomb mazes

Would you believe all well-formed mazes are generated the same? The difference is in how the walls are drawn.

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Added more Truchet Tiles

Orthogonal, Diagonal, and Curved. You can mix and match them together!

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And more!

  • Better drawing of counterweights and belts
  • Added timestamps to Marlin conversation
  • Added more unit tests for unused translations and missing translations
  • Internally merged shared code for Vornoi diagrams
  • Internally merged shared code for Truchet tiles
  • Internally merged shared code for Mazes

Final thoughts

So if any of that seems interesting to you, check it out in the nightly builds.

Thank you to everyone who donated to support the software development. Your donations keep me in beer, and beer keeps me at Ballmer peak.

Discuss this and anything else plotter related on our Discord.

Makelangelo News

Friday Facts 6: Makelangelo software 7.28.2

2021-10-22 Dan

Today I’m pleased to announce the stable release of Makelangelo software 7.28.2. I’d like to thank everyone in the community for your support, especially the Discord users working to find and report bugs.

Lookin’ good, good lookin’!

Goodbye, Makelangelo Firmware

The big news is that Marginally Clever is no longer maintaining Makelangelo-firmware. It was too much esoteric work taking up all my time. Instead I teamed up with the good people that make Marlin 3D printer firmware. Together we’ve added polargraph robot support. Check out FF4 if you want the open source code or to make your custom machine tweaks.

New plotter controls separate making art from driving robot.

Get Makelangelo Software

The newest makelangelo software is available in our store, by donation. You can also get releases from our open source github repository.

In order to make it run you will need to install Java JDK 17 or later.

Use Makelangelo Software

Video time!

video late because editor is AFK. one more pandemic shortage!

Contribute

We’d love more people translating the app and sharing ideas about how to make it better. Join us on Discord or submit a ticket to github today.

Makelangelo News Robot Arm

Friday Facts 1: Sixi 3 update

2021-09-17 Dan

This week I worked on the Sixi 3 arm quite a lot.

Coding

Monday, I made a new tool to talk to my robots. Arduino Serial monitor is all well and good but I needed more features and some color coding.

Sixi 3

Tuesday I tackled a problem with the base of the robot. When I designed the first version it seemed fine! Then I tried to drive it while in a Zoom meeting for the Vancouver Robotics Club and discovered that at the right spot the base and the J1 actuator collide.

Whoops. So I designed and 3D printed a new base…

…which didn’t work! The screws to attach the base to the board could not be accessed after the base was on the J0 gearbox. No tool clearance is bad! Taking the whole robot off the board just to fix J0 is bad! So that went in the recycling and I tried again.

That worked much better!

The screws that go on an angle through the top and bottom halves of the base need a nut. The nut can’t turn. I could make a really tight slot that the nut barely fits into… but then how do i get the nut out later? My solution is these nut holding tools. They fit snugly, prevent the nut from turning, and give me a convenient handle to grab with pliers when I need to pull them out. A gift to my future self!

Makelangelo 5

As you know from the previous post, there’s a new firmware coming that is faster, smoother, and much more friendly to all they DIY people out there. Much of this week has been talking with people on Discord, showing them how to set up their custom versions. In short,

  • Install the apps mentioned in https://mcr.dozuki.com/Guide/How+to+upload+Makelangelo-firmware+from+Windows+(2021+)/33?lang=en
  • Get the firmware currently at https://github.com/i-make-robots/Marlin-polargraph
  • read Marlin/Configuration.h and change where needed for your board, your drivers, your LCD.
  • For size changes and more advanced stuff, come talk with us!

I’ve also filmed raw footage about how to use 3M hooks to put a Makelangelo on a flat wall. Some people don’t like the suction cups or they don’t have a big window. No problem! Subscribe to my Youtube channel and watch for the announcement.