This Arduino Nano Every-controlled machine automatically mixes acrylic paint of any color

When you want to paint the walls in your room, that very specific tone of Irish green, all you have to do is address your local hardware store and make them scan the corresponding card. The paint mixing machine will add the pigment to a white base and, a few minutes later, it has that exact color. So, shouldn’t you be able to do the same with acrylic paint for the purposes of hobby? Now it can, thanks to the “color by code” machine designed by Frida Moreno and her team.

Moreno and its partners built color by code for a class project and is essentially a hobby version of these paint mixtures of the hardware store for acrylic paint. As is the standard in many industries that deal with pigments, paint and printing, this works with the CMYK color mixture (cyan, magenta, yellow, key). Here, the key is black and the machine takes an input value for each component, then dispensing the paint in those proportions to achieve the desired tone.

All this happens under the control of an Arduino Nano on each board. This operates peristal pumps, through L298N motor controllers, which dispenses each color. Subsequently, a download procedure clears the lines before the next mixture. The pumps fit into a 3D printed support, with the hoses that fall under a container waiting.

At this time, the user must establish color values ​​through standard commands. But the team hopes to create a Bluetooth application in the future. They also plan to add a weight sensor, which would improve the accuracy of the machine.