The Giant Printer

The Giant Printer was originally made in Komponent/LAB, a venue for electronic music and activity (http://komponent.dk/about.php) that Dzl was part of for 10 years. It was made for the Public Service Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2006. (http://gallery.komponent.dk/albums/PUBLICSERVICE2004/DSCN2476.jpg). At the time, Komponent needed to print some large canvasses, 5 x 2.5 meters and had a limited budget. They needed a cheap printer with cheap ink. When they started to build the printer, their first idea was to build a giant X Y plotter (horizontal and vertical moving bar) but since there was very little time available they wanted to make the printer as simple as possible with as few mechanical parts as possible. They started to experiment and while measuring the length of the belts for the printer, realized they could raise and lower the print head by pulling on the belts. The hardware was simple, but the software proved to be a bit more difficult, they needed to solve the equation for the varying length of each belt as it moved.