Plottin' Bottles with a CNC Machine

You’ve probably seen a plotter of some kind made from DVD players and the like. These devices, of course, normally work with objects in the XYZ coordinate system. As cool as they are, TUENHIDIY's build takes things to another level – or at least in another direction – with a pair of printer rollers subbed in for the Y-axis. This allows a bottle to roll in coordination with an X/Z gantry system on top, decorating it with whatever text or drawings are programmed

The rotary CNC plotter is controlled by an Arduino Uno, with a CNC shield and A4988 drivers. Two NEMA 17 steppers near the base of the rig turn in tandem to spin the bottle for marking. X and Z actuation is handled by a couple of old CD/DVD players, which are connected at 90 degrees to each other on the gantry setup.

Upon first glance, one would assume the unit can traverse the entirety of the machine in the X direction, however its actual automatic DVD player range is much smaller. Larger adjustments are instead made to the threaded rod axis manually before bottle plotting.

GRBL firmware runs the show, and Inkscape generates toolpaths via the Gcodetools extension. From there it’s a matter of adjusting the gantry and loading code using a Gcode sender, enabling TUENHIDIY to convert fish sauce bottles – or whatever else he finds – into liquid or spice storage!