Build Your Own Wall Drawing Robot

In this workshop, we'll cover everything needed to build a wall drawing robot—a vertical plotter often called a polargraph—a project that takes just a few hours and costs under £100.

Due to time constraints, the workshop will be a group build: instead of everyone making their own, we'll work together on a single robot. We will cover: assembling the 3D-printed gondola parts, mounting the stepper motors, wiring and powering the servo, flashing and configuring the MKS TinyBee board with firmware, and generating correct G-code.

An accompanying web-based tutorial will document every step, so anyone can return home and build their own using what they learn here. We will share a materials list in advance, some can bring their own MKS TinyBee board to flash or their own 3D-printed gondola parts to assemble. By the end, participants should have the skills and confidence to build their own wall drawing robot at home.

This workshop is an updated and upgraded version of a now out of date tutorial I wrote years ago that still gets a lot of traffic on my website: https://lizmelchor.com/wall-robot/

This workshop is designed for people of all skill levels: no previous experience in electronics or similar builds is required. Please find all the materials you might need here: https://lizmelchor.com/peckham-workshop/

About Liz Melchor:
Liz Melchor is an American artist based in Vienna and Lisbon whose practice injects humanness into technologically-driven processes. She began drawing by hand, gestural and fast, each mark responding to the last, the end result always unforeseen. Then she discovered pen plotters and became fascinated by the contrast: how do you find surprise with a predictable machine? The obsession led her, at over 40 years old and with no technical background, to learn to build her own drawing robots. She now works with pen plotters, generative algorithms, and interactive installations, welcoming glitches, errors, and material accidents as collaborators rather than problems to fix. She has exhibited and presented across Europe, including at TedAI Vienna and Sónar+D Barcelona, and is featured in Tracing the Line: The Art of Drawing Machines and Pen Plotters. She has guest lectured at art universities in Austria and Portugal. She holds master's degrees in psychology and writing, and her creative work ranges widely, including founding and running Storytelling Lisboa, a monthly live storytelling event.