One of the challenging and exciting parts about Polargraph is trying to avoid changing things while still progressing the project. Changing things is easy enough when it comes to code (though requires re-testing), but it gets harder and more expensive (and much slower) when it’s a physical item, like the PCB or the case.

The last case was lasercut acrylic. This new one will be too, but I don’t have a laser cutter nearby, so I prototype in cardboard.

This is just the shapes printed out and stuck to the a sheet of corrugated cardboard, and cut out with a scalpel. There’s limits to what degree of realism I can achieve with this low-fidelity mockup, but I can test the major interactions.

I discovered I’d completely forgotten to put a set of tabs in on the end plates. Other than that, a bit of misalignment here and there. The files are off to the laser cutter!

In other news, I have had some good results with the new firmware (https://github.com/euphy/polargraph_server_polarshield_esp32) which has got high stepping rates, along with good responsiveness from the screen. Happy with it so far… But I haven’t tested it properly yet! Eeek!