Barton Dring Built a Spinning String Art Machine with an ESP32

In his newest YouTube video, maker extraordinaire Barton Dring demonstrates a pretty amazing string art machine that he recently built using an ESP32.

You may remember Dring from his viral Polar Coaster CNC Pen Plotter that we featured recently, his ESP32-friendly version of Grbl, or as the inventor of the MakerSlide linear movement components. With a resume like that, he was the perfect person to build an automated CNC string art machine. Dring was inspired by a robotic string art machine, which we featured last year. That relied on a massive, industrial, 6-axis robot arm, but Dring’s design is far more clever — and affordable.

The machine produces huge 24" string art pieces by looping thousands of feet of thread between nails set around the circumference of a circular board. Each loop of string forms a geometrical chord, and the varying density of the crossing chords eventually yields a recognizable image. It’s a really impressive effect, and one that takes some very specialized hardware to create.

Dring’s ingenious solution was to treat the entire setup like a CNC machine that could utilize his Grbl software for ESP32 development boards. The work piece sits on a spinning platter that acts as the X-axis, the arm that threads the nails is the Y-axis, and a drill for the nail holes is treated as the Z-axis. By coordinating their movement, the machine can drill the nail holes, and then precisely wind the thread through the nails to form an image.

Coming up with the G-code that controls that thread placement was, however, likely the most complex part of the build. Dring is using a custom algorithm that runs within MATLAB. It can take several hours to process an image, but eventually that yields a series of chord coordinates. Those are then processed with a Python script to generate G-code. Dring can send that G-code to the ESP32 via WiFi, and the machine will create the string art. The results are every bit as good as those from the 6-axis robot, but Dring’s machine is purpose-built, more compact, and far cheaper to make.