Mechanical Display

A "mechanical display" consists of a single display unit composed of a 4x4 dot pixel unit. By connecting multiple display units together, a larger display can be created. After creating the display unit, I made a grayscale display plate for visibility testing.

Based on the actual test results, the evaluation is as follows:

• Operational Speed: 

The speed of operation was faster than expected, and it may be possible to achieve around 10 frames per second (FPS). However, I do not want to imagine the noise and power consumption in doing so.

• Visibility:

Although it can be used as a grayscale display, the visibility is not good due to the white base plate and servo cables being visible through the gaps in the pixel units. The parts should be changed to black, and the gaps in the pixel units should be minimized as much as possible.

• Grayscale Plate: 

The idea of using a plate with a mountain-shaped pattern, painted in black and white on both sides to represent grayscale depending on the angle, seems to work better than expected. However, since it was created using an FDM 3D printer, it was challenging to achieve the desired color separation through painting. It is necessary to consider alternative methods of coloring.

First, I designed servo-driven pixel units and assembled them by 3D printing the parts. We arranged 16 pixel units to form a display unit, and the concept is to connect any number of display units to construct the display. In the video, we tested the operation by arranging a 4x4 grid of pixel units on a base plate. It is moving quite nicely, with promising results.