Sketch the present time with this Magna Doodle clock

The Magna Doodle is a basic kids’s toy that works by embedding a layer of iron shavings just under the floor of a canvas after which utilizing a magnetic pen to tug them up, thus displaying no matter traces might need been drawn. Steve Turner had the thought to automate this drawing course of by changing his Magna Doodle right into a clock for displaying the present time in virtually any TrueType font.

To start, Turner created a easy picket body with a number of reduce slots for its three NEMA17 stepper motors, the electronics housing, and the Magna Doodle itself. On the backside of the body sits a timing belt loop that, when pulled in a single course by the stepper motor’s pulley, drags the erasing head as a way to reset the canvas for the subsequent drawing cycle. In the meantime, the highest has a pair of stepper motors organized in a SCARA design, which makes use of a few arms joined at a single level to maneuver the magnetic head over the world.

Driving this mixture of stepper motors is a Nano Each board that sends motion instructions to a set of three TMC2130 stepper motor drivers and a micro servo. When the gadget attracts a quantity, the Arduino reads the font file from an SD card and plots it in response to the time given by a DS3231 RTC module.

To see Turner’s challenge in motion, you’ll be able to watch its demonstration video beneath and try his tutorial on Hackster.io.