On Monday evening, Wendy Richmond visited to see what I’ve been working on.  One thing she questioned, both in watching me, and in using the mechanism herself, was whether I was bothered by the way the ropes constrained me to a section of the board.  I hadn’t been terribly bothered by it, but at the same time, was already been working out a way to get past it with the infrared-detection scheme.  The question still remains – what place do ropes have in this work?  If they do belong in this work, is the tension of the constraint also part of the work or something I need to remove?

Later in the week, though, I sketched one possible solution to the roop loop constraint.

By replacing the rope loops with a simple system of counterweights, I would be able to move the drawing tool freely across the entire drawing surface.

On Saturday, I put together a prototype, by cutting the rope loops and adding water-filled soda bottles as counterweights.

At first, the system had too much friction, but after adjusting the pulley locations and changing the amount of weight in the soda bottles, I found a good balance.