When starting a new drawing, the user can choose which one of these six sheets he/she wants to draw on by punching in a number between 1 and 6. We chose to create a 2×3 virtual and physical grid consisting of 6 A3 sheets. Send G-code to the plotter (and manage the queue)īefore going to Trondheim Maker Faire, we wanted the program to be able to only draw inside the paper edges and not directly on the backplate (for obvious reasons).Visualize the drawing in realtime in the GUI.Able the user to choose the correct sheet/drawing area.To make this mode as user-friendly as possible, we made a custom GUI program in Python which can run on most platforms. The plotter will then draw the same as you do, although with a delay proportional your personal drawing speed (hence the quotation marks) since the plotter moves at a constant speed. Realtime drawing is the mode we use for input from a drawing pad or a PC mouse in “realtime”. Realtime Drawing – The Python Drawing Program The only difference between these two modes is in reality how the G-code is generated. G-code GenerationĪs mentioned several times earlier in this blog series, the plotter has two main modes: In this post we will go through how these two steps are done in our plotter. Interpret the G-code and translate it to machine movement.We basically needed software to do two things: We wanted the plotter to behave like a human drawing on a sheet of paper and not like a printer, so a vector-based foundation was desired. path-based, just like any sane person would normally use a pencil) and not pixel/bitmap-based as the old dot matrix printers or indeed our very first laser engraver.
The advantage with G-code is that everything is vector-based (i.e. This is a standardized set of instructions mainly used for automated machine control and is widely utilized in the world of CNC mills and 3D printers. In our case, one of these fundamentals is the use of G-code. However, as soon as you get a grasp of some basic fundamentals, the road from some jpeg from the internet (or a smiley on a drawing pad) to a nice little drawing on a sheet of paper gets dramatically shorter. Getting an image to the machine from somewhere else might at first seem like the most challenging aspect of a drawing machine like this.
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