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At Midwest RepRap Festival (MRRF) 2024 I met the non-profit group See3D, a group which sources 3D prints from volunteers for distribution to blind/visually impaired people. At their booth they had a Perkins Brailler on display. At the time I simply thought it was interesting to see, but it lived at the back of my head for a few months before I looked up what one cost. A manual brailler costs a little under $1,000 and electric braillers cost significantly more. Given that I was just at a 3D printing festival and you can build a 3D printer for under $200, I decided to try to design one.
The basic design goals I came up with were:
- The embosser should cost $100-200.
- The embosser should be open source and open hardware.
- The embosser should be entirely 3D printed or made with off-the-shelf components.
- The embosser should be simple. There should be as few parts as possible and, except for the electronics, no complex mechanisms.
- The embosser should have an optional case to protect the user and the embosser.
- The embosser should be well documented. This includes a bill of materials, detailed instructions, code, wiring diagrams, and stl and CAD files for all printed parts.
Over the next year I worked on a prototype, got some preliminary user testing, and was able to show a working prototype at MRRF 2025. The basic design uses an ESP32 microcontroller to control the brailler, a stepper motor turning a pair of rollers to move the paper, a second stepper motor moving a toolhead through a belt, and a solenoid linear actuator on the toolhead to punch dots into the paper, and a custom keyboard to input commands. The bill of materials for the prototype was ~$180 with significant room for cost downs. Documentation of the GitHub at https://github.com/gglobalwarming/BudgetBrailler.
This blog will be dedicated to documenting the progress of the project as well as detailing some of my design process. I’m excited to see the BudgetBrailler improve and hope you are too! If you would like to get involved in designing or testing the project please contact me at [email protected].
