February 20th, 2011
 
The weather was beautiful today.  I spent the first part of the day preparing my images for the art show.  Still not done!  In the afternoon, I stopped by the Ace Hardware store here in Fullerton.  This hardware store kicks ass.  Funnily enough I feel like I find more selection here than in the monster Home Depot down the street.  The staff there is old school and they know they’re stuff.
 
I went in there looking for parts for my Pintograph project.  In the hardware aisle you can commonly see this friendly older gentleman who works there who will find you whatever screw, bolt, fastener or whatever you need for your project, and if they don’t have it he will find you an alternative.
 
I described to him what I was building and how it should work and he took me around the aisle showing me all kinds of options.  It was great because if he wasn’t there I would have assembled the thing completely different.
 
I decided to work in my parents garage because its roomier and my parents were up in Northern Cali for the weekend.  I made a few mistakes in the construction process though.  I started by building my drawing surface and gluing legs to the bottom of it.  I clamped it down and began working on constructing the arms that will hold the pen.
 
I drilled the holes for mounting my DC motors and soon after realized that I placed them too high on the drawing surface.  I decided to build a second drawing surface out of some scrap wood I found laying around.  I mounted the motors to it and began assembling the arms together with little metal binding posts.  As I was assembling it I realized that I didn’t buy enough binding posts to actually finish so my work had to end unfinished.
 
I should have this guy up and running in the next day or two.  I’m looking forward to experimenting with it.