Prototype. Chapter text drafted from the research notes and not yet checked at the archives. Images awaiting permission are marked.

Owen Trueblood's robot-arm tufting system: a hacked tufting gun on a UR5 (2022)

Event · not yet checked at the source · Image permission pending

Made by: Owen Trueblood
Date: Feb–Mar 2022; exhibited Apr 2023
Place: New York
Held by: Hackaday.io
Themes: Hand-tufting tools & the gun, Tools & equipment

View at the source Cited in chapter 12, note 36

Cite this source

Owen Trueblood. “Owen Trueblood’s robot-arm tufting system: a hacked tufting gun on a UR5 (2022),” Feb–Mar 2022; exhibited Apr 2023. Hackaday.io. hackaday.io/project/184058-robotic-tufting-system/log/203292-hacking-the-tufting-gun.

Research notes

The best-documented hobby and studio robot-tufting build. Trueblood's Hackaday.io log (February 2022) shows how he replaced a consumer tufting gun's 555-timer PWM motor controller with an Arduino. He added a 3.5 mm jack carrying an on/off input and an analogue speed input so a robot can drive the gun, and he explains the gun's loop- and cut-pile modes. Hackaday covered it on 5 Mar 2022 as 'Robotic Tufting Gun Fires Off CNC Textiles', calling it the slow, arbitrary-pattern kind of machine, unlike fast fixed-pattern industrial tufters. A collaboration write-up, 'Parks x Needle', says the gun went on a UR5 robot arm, after a first try with a punch needle was dropped for speed. It tufted the shapes of NYC park wildlife zones, with hand punch-needling to fill in, for the Ground Truth IRL exhibition (April 2023). Sources: https://hackaday.com/2022/03/05/ · https://hackaday.io/project/184058-robotic-tufting-system/log/203292-hacking-the-tufting-gun · https://sneaky-number-c9a.notion.site/Parks-x-Needle-2cf72c8a5bee4072ba335dad2cce4fb7 Research note (Oct 2026): from search results; pages not opened.