The idea of c0re_h came from necessity. It all started with my involvement in Fab Academy. I was teaching the students, and they came up with some ideas to build a machine. I was supposed to guide them, and it was fun. They brainstormed a lot and finally decided to make a light painting machine, which later came to be known as “Velichapad.”
It was really fun building that machine. They had some constraints—they wanted a machine with no X-axis support, meaning they needed that single light dot to appear suspended in the air. The idea itself was interesting because there were two things I hadn’t tried before:
- It was meant to be a large CoreXY machine with a size of 1500mm x 1500mm.
- A suspended gantry, with the light dot mounted on it, hanging with just its belts
These two features made the project intreasting to experiment with. The students didn’t know I was experimenting too—except Saheen.
The project started and everyone worked hard. Akash finished the design quickly. Printing and assembly got done, but then came the problem.
The suspended gantry became an issue. Since it wasn’t constrained along the X-axis, it started to wobble. The other axis was fine, but they also had a constraint to keep everything minimal and within the frame. So we needed another approach—and that’s when the idea of core_h came in.
The core_h machine is a modified version of CoreXY. I looped the belts around the entire frame, thereby constraining it in both X and Y axes. So, in theory, if the belts are properly tensioned, the system should be stable along those two axes, allowing the gantry to suspend freely without any X-axis support.
.svg)
However, instead of having two gantries on either side like a typical CoreXY, this design has four gantries at the four corners. It’s still theoretical—I haven’t tried it in reality yet. Also, it’s not constrained in the Z-axis, and I still haven’t figured out how to solve that. I’m thinking about it and might work on it later.
Now, if you're wondering why it's called core_h—simple: Hitler. Yeah, the reason is this—while designing the kinematics, I noticed the belt pattern looked like a swastika, and I was struck by it. So I named it accordingly. I know it’s frowned upon to name it that way, but I don’t care—c0re_h it is.
Design Files