well, progress has been slow but I have finally done few successful drawings. First, the motorshield took its time in transit. Then, afer it arrived and I got the machine finished my computer decided that it was time to retire. After I got another one up and running, and that was a bit of a battle in itself ( I really, really do not like windos8 ), I had a most frustrating connection issue with arduino. Turns out that I need to joink the motorshield off the darn thing to get polargraphcontroller to connect, and it took me a while to figure this out. So now I just tend to leave everything on all the time to avoid faffing about with the arduino/motorshield packet.

Anyway, seems to be working for now. There are still some things in the desing that needs to be looked at. I am currently using string that looks to be springy. And I suspect that my sprockets are slipping on the string, or I am losing steps. Also when I made the gondola I did not give enough thought to attaching the pen, or lift servo. So mk2.0 is already under work.