Paintbrush Cleaning Tool

Built for an Engineering 101 client project: our client James Keul, a professional oil painter, came to us with a problem painters deal with constantly — cleaning oil paintbrushes is slow and inefficient, and traditional methods that involve direct physical contact with the brush often cause skin irritation from the solvents involved. We set out to build a completely autonomous, easy-to-use, user-centered paintbrush cleaning device.

The solution uses three containers — one each for the solvent Turpenoid, soap, and water — with a dual-carriage system moving brushes between them. An outer carriage, riding an 80/20 aluminum extrusion for linear motion, travels across all three containers, while an inner carriage supports the brushes within each one; the whole assembly is stabilized with 3D-printed support blocks and aluminum extrusion. Both carriages are driven by stepper motors controlled by an ESP32. On startup, two limit switches calibrate the device by having the outer carriage travel from one end to the other to measure the distance it needs to cover, then return to the origin point, at which point an LCD prompts the user to load brushes into the inner carriage — thinner brushes on one side, thicker ones on the other, up to 10 brushes total — and choose one of three cleaning modes: long, medium, or short.