Printer Bot

Printer Bot was a project by PDI Studio students who were challenged to make a robot out of spare e-waste parts. They upcycled an old HP printer by reworking the rubber cylinder motor that controlled paper flow and cut it up so that it touched the ground to power a bot that drove around (really fast!). It was also super cute, using the upper shell of the printer to look like a futuristic go kart.

Construction Log:
First, we disassembled a printer and pulled out parts that we thought would be useful for either structure or mechanics.
Next, we added wheels to the rollers inside the printer. We repurposed the rollers as axels and glued the wheels down.
To provide clearance for the wheels we cut off a portion of the body of the printer.
We added three wheels so that they wouldn't hit each other as it ran.
Pictured here is another view of the axels.
If you look at the right end of the axels, they are placed in a whole to maintain balance. These were just other parts we had from the disassembly that we reused.
We found that we needed more wheel clearance, so we sawed off a bit more the body.
The motor to get the axels to run which means the wheels will run!
Pictured here is the wiring for the motor. We found that the Arduino did not provide enough power to run the motor, so we added an external 9V battery to the circuit.
We tried to hook up the arduino to an external power source so we weren't dependent on the computer for power.
Final Product with name and eyes! Welcome PrinterBot!!!!