1 Topic by coleke

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Topic: Pen plotter

It seems like it would be easy to print a sharpie holder (or just use Ian's dial gauge mount with a big enough pen), but any cad users in here know what the workflow would be to take an illustrator file and print it in 2D?

Grand Rapids, Michigan
SD2 with Sanguinololu board, glass bed mod, E3d_v5 bowden version hotend (currently direct drive), Lawsy Mk5 jigsaw replacement, octopi printserver, drv8825(tiny troubles)

2 Reply by Brad

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Re: Pen plotter

Hmmm....

You will probably need to modify it so that there's something that can raise and lower the sharpie, unless you wanted to use one continuos line, which would be simpler.

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3 Reply by IanJohnson

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Re: Pen plotter

You can move the stage down instead of the pen up.  When I started moving the gauge around I had the same idea about the pen. I'm sure there is some kind of svg to gcode converter out there.  I know there is something that will convert a picture to a drawing that uses a single continuous line.

4 Reply by jooshs

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Re: Pen plotter

I like to use http://inkscape.org/  ... Quite a few useful tools in there.

5 Reply by solijohn

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Re: Pen plotter

Wasn't aware of that one. Looks great. I've seen plug ins that convert pictures into "etched" drawings on a 3D print surface. Maybe some variation on this would help?

Former Solidoodle employee, no longer associated with the company.

6 Reply by Kyle

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Re: Pen plotter

I used corel draw's "trace" feature to change images into vectors and mastercam to make the tool paths / g-code a while back.

http://i376.photobucket.com/albums/oo204/captainkeewl/50a7b03a.jpg