Sudoku Solving 3D printer
I really enjoy doing sudoku puzzles, and I was curious if I could build a robot that could solve them. I initially thought about building a custom CNC pen plotter, but realized that I already have one (and you might too). A 3D printer is a wonderful platform to try this kind of stuff. My goal was to add on to the existing machine in a way that was non-destructive. I need this to still function as a 3D printer when I’m done. I started by designing a pen mount and camera mount that I attached to my 3D printer using existing mounting points. After dialing in the right height to draw with the pen, I generated some gcode to write all the numbers on a piece of paper. With that complete, I connected a raspberry pi zero w to my printer and wrote some python code to send gcode commands to the printer. I continued to develop the python code to write any number in the puzzle cells from left to right, top to bottom. From there I started writing a sudoku solving algorithm that can take a string of numbers that represents an unsolved puzzle, and output a string of numbers that represents a solved puzzle. The next step will be implementing computer vision to process an image of an unsolved puzzle. Stay tuned for the next video!
