Who are we?

We are two software developers with a passion for "good software", art, music, graphics and print. Our company's website can be found here (fullscreen.nl).

Our first drawbot

In 2012 we built our first drawbot based on the V-plotter design after seeing the Polargraph website. We wanted a bigger drawbot that could draw with a big permanent marker on wooden panels as well as paper. So we bought a Raspberry-PI some stepper motors, drivers etc. and wrote our own custom software. After two months of experimenting we had this machine: (youtube video). It proved to be a real workhorse, we have done hundreds of drawings on it and it is still running fine on a daily basis. We now call it the 'Blackstripes MK1'.

The Blackstripes Mark 2

After some time we got a little dissatisfied with the maximum drawing speed of the V-plotter concept. We also wanted a machine a bit more portable and capable of drawing with ballpoint pens, smaller markers, bigger markers (Edding 850!) or even paint brushes. This effort evolved into the 'Blackstripes MK2'. This has proven to be a very versatile and fast drawbot. Capable of drawing small pen drawings on a4 size paper as well as big pieces on wood panels up to 1 square meter. See video

The Blackstripes Mini

People liked the drawings we made with our bots so we made a small webshop to sell the large drawings made with permanent markers. Some of our customers asked for smaller drawings that could easily be framed. We felt hat we couldn't offer these drawings at a fair price if we would make them on our large machines. (A small drawing would take as long as an 1 square meter one) The 'Blackstripes Mini' was born, basically a scaled down very fast version of the MK2 with a direct drive system. We now run 3 of these in our shop so we can offer drawings for 25 EUR including shipping.

Software

The software we use in our shop is open source. So if you know how to build and configure software for Raspberry-PI have a look.

The Blackstripes drawbot driver can be found here: Github.
The drawing algorithms can be found here: Github.

Roadmap

As you can tell by now we have become addicted to building these drawbots. These are fun machines! We are planning to share the fun and offer d.i.y kits for building your own Blackstripes bots in the future. Stay tuned!

Kind regards

Jeroen van Goor
Johan ten Broeke
The Blackstripes Team