Decorating Easter Eggs with an EggBot

Have fun decorating Easter Eggs the STEM way with a 3D printed Sphere-O-Bot (an EggBot modification) drawing robot.

Decorating Easter Eggs with the Sphere-o-bot drawing robot.

Hello everyone, in this post I’m sharing details on a little drawing robot I built: the Sphere-O-bot. As Easter approaches, I thought building a Sphere-O-Bot (EggBot) would be a fun a STEM related project for the season. I 3D printed the parts for the Sphere-O-Bot, a variant of the original EggBot by Evil Mad Science, and purchased the hardware kit from JJ Robots.

Printing and assembling the EggBot was simple. Getting it to run properly was not. For more details on my troubleshooting process to get the Eggbot running hop over to my tech blog, The Coding Couple.

The 3D Model

3D printed parts to the Sphere-o-bot (Eggbot)

The files for the Sphere-o-bot are available for download on Thingiverse. For the main frame of the bot, I used a remix that allowed for a supportless print.

Fillamentum PLA Filament

I used Fillamentum’s Vertigo Galaxy and Sky Blue for the printed parts.

Assembling the EggBot

Assembling the EggBot was pretty straight forward. I purchased the hardware kit from JJ Robots. You can find it here. I might have been able to save a little money sourcing my own parts, but opted for the simplicity of having that work done already. I followed JJ Robot’s online assembly instructions.

Stepper motors in the hardware kit from JJRobots

The Arduino Leonardo and CNC brains for the Eggbot

Installing the Stepper motors onto the EggBot frame

The assembled Sphere-o-bot ready for commands from Inkscape

Decorating Easter Eggs with the Eggbot via Inkscape

The Eggbot uses an Inkscape extension for communication. Getting the two communication with one another was the most difficult step in the whole project. I’m thankful that I have a technical background and experience with the Python programming language. I needed to debug some code within the eggbot.py file to get the drawing bot working properly. I wrote a blog post explaining the steps I took to get it working on The Coding Couple.

Watch the Sphere-o-bot (Eggbot) drawing with a Sharpie

How the vector graphic looks in Inkscape vs how it looks once it was drawn onto a plastic Easter egg with the Eggbot

Lightening McQueen and Robo Car Poli designs decorated onto plastic Easter Eggs with the Eggbot

My son loves this little egg bot project and has been requesting many designs drawn onto eggs. This was my first drawing bot and I look forward to building more in the future.

CLICK HERE to check out some of my other 3D printing projects.