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Tag - Plotter

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14/11/2011

Do you fill like I do ?

Now that you understand what drawing with Gcode really means, you know that only vectors can be turned into stroke paths.
In a vector graphic editor such as Inkscape you can fill a closed path, but that filling will only exist on your screen.
Even if you tell Inkscape to fill in some path, you will only get the path's outline plotted when converted into Gcode instructions. That's because only the outline is a path but the filled area isn't.
So if we want our filled areas to be pen-plotted, we must first find a way to convert them into stroke paths.

Let's see how...TSP (result)

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25/10/2011

Drawing with Gcode

It took me a lot of time, web searches, trials and errors to find a way to convert a bitmap image into a nice Gcode tool path.
I have tried many things including extruding a greyscale image into a 3D mesh and then extract its first slice using Axon/Skeinforge.
But this method, like many others, produced very poor results...

...until I found out there is a pen-plotter project for the Makerbot called "Unicorn".

Inkscape plugin

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23/10/2011

Making a multi tool holder

I will need something to hold a pen in place of the original extruder if I want to use my Rapman as a pen plotter.

As usual, I'm gonna design that part in Sketchup.

Pen holder

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22/10/2011

Back in 2D

For many reasons (including holydays and laziness) I haven't been writing any posts for a long time now !
But during all that time I've done a few experiments trying to turn my Rapman into a pen plotter.
This is what I'm going to describe in the next posts : using a 3D printer for doing 2D things.

Yes I know, it really sounds stupid...
2D plotter

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