A two month long project that fulfills an 8 year long quest to know once and for all what the original writing instrument was for the famous Maillardet Automaton, which is housed at the Franklin Institute here in Philadelphia. The machine was created in the 1790's, almost certainly as a collaboration between the shops of Jaquet-Droz and Maillardet ~ with the majority of the mechanism designed and manufactured under Jaquet-Droz and the programming (a very large bank of 3-axis cams) created by Maillardet. The automaton is essentially an elaborate 3 dimensional pantograph, and so I use a simple 2-D pantograph in a proof of concept project to replicate the way the Maillardet Automaton originally made its elaborate renderings with very high crisp detail using varying line widths. I conclude this one as Q.E.D. - Quod Erat Demonstrandum!
My original blog "Reverse Engineering the Maillardet Automaton" -
http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings9.html #reversemakeup
Join Team FranLab!!!! Become a patron and help support my YouTube Channel on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/frantone
#hugo #lost #mystery
- Music by Fran Blanche -
Fran on Twitter - https://twitter.com/contourcorsets
Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html
FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com
My original blog "Reverse Engineering the Maillardet Automaton" -
http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings9.html #reversemakeup
Join Team FranLab!!!! Become a patron and help support my YouTube Channel on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/frantone
#hugo #lost #mystery
- Music by Fran Blanche -
Fran on Twitter - https://twitter.com/contourcorsets
Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html
FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com
This thing is unreal
Do they have any plans to get the machine working again? It would be great to have it restored to its full original capabilities.
brilliant!
Nice to see you go all-in on this.
WOW! This is amazing! Great work Fran.
I appear to have fully 9% of your skill… 🤔
Nice video. I've a few brush pens from when I tried to learn a bit of calligraphy and they are very versatile.
The stencil you made was the biggest issue I expect.
At one company I worked at (the first in fact) The control panels of the various products were all engraved on a pantograph, a good deal larger than your little unit.
All the stencils, letters and so on were made from brass, and were very well finished. That was most of the trick to getting good results, the stylus was super hard and very highly polished. For the most part the Z axis was fixed, but it was controllable by a handwheel on the top of the stylus, for when some depthg control was needed.
A CNC router, not the woodworking things you used, but one intended for engraving would have made life easier. Many people have used these to make routed type PCB's and the width of the line is set by the depth of cut, and the shape of the bit. If you don't have such a machine they are worth looking at. The small units are not very expensive.
Without that I would have tried an actual PCB, scan the artwork and tidy it up, convert to gerbers, then have a board made using 2oz copper, That would give you some easy to follow paths with the stylus.
Very interesting project well presented.
I love seeing obsessive passion projects like this. Another absolutely fantastic video from fran
oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!
Fascinating. One of your best videos ever!
With a more sophisticated CNC system, it might be possible to adjust the depth of the pantograph template to control the Z height. This would be similar to the grooves in a record that encode both left and right channels. This would require programming in the line width and using some sophisticated coding probably to turn that into a height level. So it'd not be super simple.
My brain kept asking if a pen could be connected to a 3D printer head. I told it to shut up and enjoy the precision you were able to achieve.
What Edison said about genius holds true here!
Franklin is so lucky to have Fran.