The Geoweaver – powered by an Atmel-based Arduino Uno (ATmega328) – was designed by a team of students at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco.
The walking, six-legged 3D printer is based on a 12-servo hexapod with an attached glue gun extruder. More specifically, the center mechanism uses two servos to control the pendulum-like extruder head, allowing it to cover a basic XY plane (curved to the surface of a sphere), along with one servo for the extrusion gear that forces the glue-sticks through the print head.
Aside from the Atmel-based Arduino Uno and servo shield, key electronic components include male headers, jumper wires, (or single core wire suitable for breadboards) and servo extension cables.
On the software side, Geoweaver is regulated and controlled via Rhino 5, with the help of Grasshopper and Firefly plug-ins.
According to the CCA team, the most difficult part of the project was determining how best to control Geoweaver while walking and printing. Quite a lot of time was spent on motion research and the platform is now capable of walking in straight and curved lines, as well as rotating, dancing and printing while walking.
Interested in learning more about the Geoweaver? You can check out the project’s official Instructables page here.
Atmel | Bits & Pieces 