Servo - March 2009

Egg-Bot is an

egg marking

and decorating

robot, just in

time for Easter.

It uses two

standard Hitec

HS-322 servos.

The brain

for Egg-Bot is

the SMC-04

USB servo

controller.

However, if

you have a

programmable

servo controller

that can control two Hitec hobby

servos simultaneously, you can use

it instead. Graphic designs and/or

text is programmed into Egg-Bot

using the GUI interface of the

SMC-04 USB controller.

by John Iovine

FIGURE 1. Platform layout drawing.

The inspiration for Egg-Bot began with a visit to Bruce Shapiro's motion control website at www.taomc.com/home.htm. If you have a chance, visit this site to see his excellent work.

Egg-Bot may be purchased as a kit or built from scratch, while the key components may be purchased separately. In this article, we will assume you are building it from scratch and the instructions are based on that premise. The kit version of Egg-Bot is shown in the Parts

List. Egg-Bot is built on a square

6. 75" x 6. 75" 3/4" thick wood platform. Component placement locations are shown in Figure 1. Brackets (see Figure 2) ease positioning and placing the servos on the platform. Location of the brackets are taken from one corner of the platform, so if you have a larger base you can still locate the positions accurately. Corner 0,0 is the lower right-hand corner as shown in Figure

1. Use that to transfer the measurements onto your wood platform.

The back plate is made from 3" x 3" x 1/8" thick acrylic plastic. It is held to the platform with two 1/2" brackets. Mount these brackets on the platform using two #4 x 3/4" length wood screws. Position the plastic back plate up against the brackets to mark the hole locations. Drill holes in the back plate and mount it to the brackets using two 6-32 machine screws and nuts (see Figure 3).