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Topic: Print-ready textgenerator, is there such a thing?

I don't have a better word for it, but I'm looking for anything that would generate text that's stuck together so that you can print it in one piece. For example I made "drink sticks" for my brother with his name on, I'm a pretty slow modeler so it took quite some time putting the letters stuck to eachother in blender. People liked the idea so I have requests coming in but each name (or word) takes so much time it's barely even worth it.

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Re: Print-ready textgenerator, is there such a thing?

This is the type of thing that openSCAD is made for.

SD3 w/ mods:
Glass bed with QU-BD heat pad upgrade, threadless ballscrew w/ 8mm smooth rod, spectra line belt replacement, lawsy MK5 extruder, Lawsy replacement carriage, E3D hotend, Ramps 1.4 w/ reprap discount controller, DRV8825 drivers, 12v 30A PS, Acrylic case, Overkill Y-idlers, Filament alarm, Extruder fan + more.

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Re: Print-ready textgenerator, is there such a thing?

That seems to be a very overcomplicated way of making cubes. I'm interested in text though, which openSCAD know nothing about (at least that I found out).

4 (edited by adrian 2014-02-19 12:28:49)

Re: Print-ready textgenerator, is there such a thing?

I think you missed the point 2n2r5 was making for you.

You model the drink sticks once in openscad, and setup a variable called 'DrinkText' - then in the openscad program, wherever you want to place that text you use $DrinkText .

Then hit F6, export to stl. Done.

When you want to change the name - Simply change the text assigned to DrinkText, and then hit F6, and it will recreate that same model with the new text on it.

You need to simply think in terms of 'what text i want to print' is simply the contents of a variable, and then in the openscad model code, you dont type 'what text i want to print', but rather the variable name. Then all you ever need to do to change 'the text' is change whats written for that variable. The model settings deal with making that 'text' appear as 3D etc etc.

You need to explore how 'Customizer' works at Thingiverse. So you'll see there is a tool, and all that needs to change between each model is the text you type in - everything else is static in the openscad file. smile

A really bad example, but heres the same concept: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:167866 . Open it in 'customizer' and you'll see you just change the text... all 'customizer' files are are Openscad files... so you can do the same thing at home in openscad without uploading to thingiverse.

Problem solved.

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Re: Print-ready textgenerator, is there such a thing?

Thank you Adrian for the clarifications. After som extensive digging around I actually managed to create something acceptable. The font is horrible though, I'd like one with a bit more detail, guess I'll have to figure out how to make a "fxb" some day. Some other things need tweaking as well, for example if a name starts with "A" or "V" the stick isn't attached. Anyway, that's for the future, for now it'll do.
It's working from home, I just have trouble uploading it since it needs both a font-file and another .scad. The one you linked uses these two files, somehow, but I have no idea where they go. It says somewhere (since everything is hidden and moves around, can't find that page again) that there's currently no support to add additional .scads, so how that dude managed to trick the system, I have no idea.

6 (edited by 2n2r5 2014-02-19 15:37:18)

Re: Print-ready textgenerator, is there such a thing?

I had 10 minutes so I threw a quick script together. I will probably upload this to thingiverse after cleaning it up. You can change the the size and shape of just about everything. Not sure how it prints but I am sure you can get it to work.

http://2n2r5.com/pictures/printer/show-n-tell/drink_stick.JPG

Post's attachments

drink stick.zip 4.04 mb, 6 downloads since 2014-02-19 

drink_stick.JPG
drink_stick.JPG 16.51 kb, file has never been downloaded. 

drink_stick.scad 2.45 kb, 1 downloads since 2014-02-19 

drink_stick.stl 135.41 kb, 6 downloads since 2014-02-19 

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SD3 w/ mods:
Glass bed with QU-BD heat pad upgrade, threadless ballscrew w/ 8mm smooth rod, spectra line belt replacement, lawsy MK5 extruder, Lawsy replacement carriage, E3D hotend, Ramps 1.4 w/ reprap discount controller, DRV8825 drivers, 12v 30A PS, Acrylic case, Overkill Y-idlers, Filament alarm, Extruder fan + more.