Makelangelo update #58

[Anonymous]

DXF import support started!

I can import LINE and SPLINE entities.

Since you are so awesome as to read the forums and participate, you get a sneak preview of tomorrow’s post.

Sneak preview

[Anonymous]

Great!
I downloaded the latest version but it won’t open a DXF file.

BTW I also can’t find Path > Object to Path and Save As in my Inscape (0.48.4 r9939, not the latest)
So just I converted text to path and saved as DXF

[Anonymous]

Why won’t it open? Any message?

I probably didn’t export the jar file. if you don’t see DXF as an option, it’s not the very cutting edge latest version.

[Anonymous]

Oh, I don’t see DXF option.
I just downloaded the fresh version from Github, java folder.

[Anonymous]

Update 59 I explicitely updated the JAR and made it easier to find conversion options (like margin and flip for glass)

[Anonymous]

Now I see it. Thanks!
Tomorrow I’ll check how it draws.

PS: I see only DXF R14 option in Inkscape, but it works

[Anonymous]

I doubt it’s drawing very efficiently – it doesn’t know how to find the next-closest line, so it may be jumping randomly all over the picture wasting time.

[Anonymous]

I hope that text will be OK. In case it’s processed letter by letter.

[Anonymous]

I tried drawing some text.
First it draws straight lines for all letters, leaving the curved lines emply.
Then it starts drawing curved lines from the first letters, dividing them to short lines. And the pen goes down and up for every such short line. Not good.

[Anonymous]

“goes down and up”? Oh… it raises the pen. I tried to get it to not lift the pen if the next line was really really close.

The DXF converter gives me all the lines, or all the splines.

The next closest line, regardless of type, would make sense, right? Doesn’t do that.

[Anonymous]

Ah, that’s a pity.

I tried Gcodetools to make G-code from Inkscape.
But Makelangelo doesn’t seem to read the code correctly if it uses G02 and G03. At least it shows some mess on the preview.

[Anonymous]

G02 and G03 are supported in theory, but it’s been a long time since I tested them. It could be the circles are reversed (eg, my G2 is their G3).

A big problem with using gcodetool is that I have a few unique lines at the top of the makelangelo gcode that describe machine settings and I’m not sure gcodetool would generate the same.

[Anonymous]

I just asked the author of gcodetools.

Gcodetools supports post-processors for output code http://cnc-club.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=78

It also can add custom footer or header, just create file “footer” or “header” in the output dir.
What should be the header for Makelangelo?

Another problem – Gcodetools creates comments in the code surrounded with ( ).
It proved that Makelangelo does not like ( ), it opens the code but the board does not accept it.
But these ( ) can be removed with regex(r”(.*?)”, r””); regex(r”;.*”, r””);.

Though I guess that ( ) are standard for comments in G-code. You could add support for this.

It would be a great deal if we succeed using Gcodetools for Makelangelo. Even without G2/G3.

[Anonymous]

The way I handle comments is to ignore everything on a line after the semicolon. so

G02 G90; (will be ignored)
G03 g90 (oops);

The header files changes based on your machine config.
Open one of your gcode files and look at the top two lines:

M101 T45.5 B-45.5 L-45.5 R45.5 I1 J-1;
D1 L3.0 R3.0;

M101 tells the robot (tblr) the machine limits and (ij) the direction each motor turns.
D1 tell the robot the size of the pulleys.
The very next line confirms that the robot is working in absolute mode, which might be redundant.

After that everything is normal gcode.

[Author]

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