Motorised Painting Handle

Ok, maybe it’s not cool to admit it, but I’m the kind of soft sap who cries at DIY SOS – seeing people’s lives changed beyond measure by the goodwill of a community of skilled people is incredible.

So when I read Ryan’s post about accessibility (https://www.beastsofwar.com/featured/roll-for-insight-wargaming-accessibility/) in the hobby, I figured “here’s something I can get involved with”. I was particularly inspired by the big button game controllers, and recall how one of the things John kept “banging on” about in his recent review of a painting handle is how comfort – in either hand – is important.

Which got me thinking about people who maybe couldn’t hold their miniatures comfortably, but still needed to be able to hold, position and rotate them for painting. Luckily, motors and electronics and making circuit boards is “my thing”. So I set about making a motorised painting handle. Hopefully someone might find it useful.

I plan to post the schematics, code, laser-cutting files and everything else needed should anyone else wish to make one too….

Now there are plenty of robotic arms readily available across the intertubes that, on the face of it, would be ideal to hold and manipulate miniatures for painting. You can buy entire robotic arms relatively cheaply (simply Google “servo arm” to see how many and how cheap they are).

In fact, my first thought was to create a servo arm but, having experience in this area, I remember how difficult it is to create “damping” at the extremes of movement; the arm doesn’t move softly from point to point – there’s no “ramping” up or down of the speed – it simply heads to each new position as quickly as possible.

It’d be no good placing a heavy lead/pewter miniature in the jaws, moving it into position and have the robot arm fling the mini across the room! What we need is something a little more controllable…..