This post used to be on Posterous. I rescued my posts before Posterous shut down and am now sharing them here.

I tweaked my little Hershey Fonts in JavaScript toy a bit. Now, the SVG data that it produces is at the right size and scale to plot on a sticky note on a MakerBot Unicorn.  Save the SVG content, load it in Inkscape, and save it as .gcode using my Inkscape extension for Unicorn.

At long last, after a bunch of little thing-a-days, I can write out a sticky-note:

And save it as G-Code for plotting on the Unicorn!

Matt Griffin was kind enough to plot it for me on one of the Thing-O-Matics at the BotCave:

... sorry for the Bel-Air... :)

You can play with it here: http://schmarty.net/hershey_js_demo/

Files

tweet.svg

85069 bytes. Updated February 14, 2011.

This work is licensed Creative Commons - Attribution.

Description

Experimenting with laying out tweets on a sticky note. Thinking about some fun automated Unicorn plots.

Unfortunately, once again, I am not home to plot this. I will try to put up pictures later, but feel free to give this a shot in the meantime.

Feedback welcome!

Instructions

To Plot

Using the Unicorn Inkscape extension: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5986

1. Load tweet.svg in Inkscape
2. Save as G-Code
3. Plot

To Edit

1. Edit the user_card, text, and timestamp layers. You’ll want to break up the groups.
2. Use the Hershey Text extension for nice single-stroke text: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/hershey
3. Plot.

To Change the Icon

1. Grab your Twitter icon as a .JPG
2. Import it into Inkscape.
3. Select it and use the Path | Trace Bitmap option.
4. Choose “Brightness Steps” under “Multiple Scans” and set it to 8.
5. Select the result, remove the fill, and set the stroke to black. Tweak to your satisfaction.

This post used to be on Posterous. I rescued my posts before Posterous shut down and am now sharing them here.

I've been toying with the idea of cool automatically generated plots for the Unicorn pen plotter. This one is an experiment in laying out a tweet for plotting on a sticky note.

It should be possible, layer, to use this as a template for creating new plots! Could be kind of fun.

Feel free to grab the file on Thingiverse.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6425

This post used to be on Posterous. I rescued my posts before Posterous shut down and am now sharing them here.

I made this version of the Baltimore Node logo the other day in Inkscape, but wasn't at home to test it. Here are the resulting plots on both EggBot and Unicorn!

The Unicorn version came out a little messed up due to my sizing the file wrong - the pen went off the edge of my sticky note pad and mussed everything up. I resized the plot to fit the sticky note fine, but had some pen registration issues with the now-crumpled sticky note pad. I'll probably try this again later with some nicer stock.

New files and more detailed description over on Thingiverse.

Files

node-logo-2layer-75x75.svg

11034 bytes. Updated February 9, 2011.

node-logo-2layer-eggbot.svg

11319 bytes. Updated February 9, 2011.

node-logo-2layer-75x75.gcode

17439 bytes. Updated February 9, 2011.

This work is licensed Creative Commons - Attribution.

Description

To go with the new multiple-color plotting functionality of my Unicorn G-Code Output extension for Inkscape, here’s a new version of the Baltimore Node logo.

This one is ready to plot in 2 layers - all of the black parts at once, followed by all of the blue ones, with a pause at the beginning of each layer to allow a pen change.

I also made use of my Hershey Fonts in SVG to make the word “baltimore” more readable after plotting. This should make it look nice, for example, on an EggBot.

UPDATE!

I forgot to resize the original for a sticky note pad (whoops!) and I was right that the EggBot version needed layers beginning with a number.

Updated files attached and pictures added!

Links

• Unicorn Inkscape extension: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5986
• Hershey Fonts in SVG: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6168

Instructions

If you have a Unicorn, try out the attached G-Code. It’s set to start with the pen centered over 0,0 and fits on a sticky note pad (75mm x 75mm).

If you have an EggBot, try plotting the SVG using the Layers dialog. Layer 1 is black, Layer 2 is blue.

Files

hershey_svg.zip

149280 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

hershey.zip

107203 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

astrology.svg

32309 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

cursive.svg

20791 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

cyrilc_1.svg

22660 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

cyrillic.svg

23636 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

futural.svg

15480 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

futuram.svg

22512 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

gothgbt.svg

35125 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

gothgrt.svg

36666 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

gothiceng.svg

35041 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

gothicger.svg

36582 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

gothicita.svg

30219 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

gothitt.svg

30303 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

greek.svg

16383 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

greekc.svg

21662 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

greeks.svg

15541 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

japanese.svg

55942 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

markers.svg

5566 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

mathlow.svg

16193 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

mathupp.svg

15783 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

meteorology.svg

16078 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

music.svg

26086 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

rowmand.svg

23433 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

rowmans.svg

15379 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

rowmant.svg

31035 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

scriptc.svg

25598 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

scripts.svg

22608 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

symbolic.svg

19740 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

timesg.svg

22309 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

timesi.svg

23030 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

timesib.svg

30928 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

timesr.svg

21818 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

timesrb.svg

30830 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

math-drawing.svg

8619 bytes. Updated February 6, 2011.

This work is licensed Public Domain.

Description

Making text for Unicorn or EggBot plots isn’t always a fun process. Most tools require you to convert text into paths, and even then you get the outlines of shapes, which can often turn messy at small sizes.

mifga pointed me towards the Hershey fonts[1]. They’re a set of fonts for vector plotters named after creator Dr. A. V. Hershey who made them for the National Bureau of Standards.

These files are in a weird, weird, format. But after some normalizing, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, I was able to write some code to parse them and spit them back out as SVG! Now you can use these fonts in your Unicorn drawings.

Each SVG contains a layout of one of the Hershey fonts. The hershey_svg.zip file below contains all of the SVG files. The hershey.zip file contains the (cleaned up) original .jhf files. math-drawing.svg is just an example of using these glyphs, including scaling and stretching. I think the result is nice!

To use these in Unicorn plots, you’ll want to grab my Unicorn G-Code extension for Inkscape[2].

[1] Hershey fonts - http://emergent.unpythonic.net/software/hershey
[2] Unicorn output for Inkscape - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5986

Instructions

To use these fonts in your Unicorn plots:

1. Download the SVG file containing the font of your choice, or grab the whole hershey_svg.zip to get them all.
2. In your Inkscape drawing, use File | Import to load the font you want
3. Drag around and duplicate the characters that you want to use.
4. Delete the ones that you don’t.
5. Plot it!
   • (Unicorn users) Save your file and Save a Copy to get your .gcode!
   • (EggBot users) Plot directly from Inkscape. :)

Files

gml2unicorn.py

2237 bytes. Updated February 5, 2011.

20226.gcode

4189 bytes. Updated February 5, 2011.

20226.gml

29892 bytes. Updated February 5, 2011.

This work is licensed BSD License.

Description

When I first heard of Graffiti Markup Language (GML)[1] I was like “An XML format for graffiti? Pfft!” Then yesterday I was like “Wait, I have a pen plotter.”

There are a ton of tags for you to play with at 000000book[2], so go get some files and start tagging … with post-it notes!

Updates

Watch for updates on GitHub:

https://github.com/martymcguire/gml2unicorn

[1] http://graffitimarkuplanguage.com/
[2] http://000000book.com/

Instructions

Installation

To use this script, you’ll need to have Python and the PyGML library installed:

https://bitbucket.org/keegan3d/pygml

Usage

• Edit the configuration section of gml2unicorn.py to match your Unicorn plotting preferences.
• Acquire a GML file. 000000book is great for this.
• python gml2unicorn.py my_graffiti.gml > my_graffiti.gcode
• Load my_graffiti.gcode in ReplicatorG
• Build!

This post used to be on Posterous. I rescued my posts before Posterous shut down and am now sharing them here.

Today I made some improvements to the inkscape-unicorn plotter extension that I released yesterday.

Specifically, I've added two things:

• The option to do a pen-registration check at the beginning of each plot, taken from mifga's original.
• The option to set where "home" is, for people who like to start their plots with the platform anywhere other than in the center.

This should help make some nice plots!

Files

martymcguire-inkscape-unicorn-43629f0.zip

10222 bytes. Updated February 1, 2011.

inkscape-unicorn.svg

37763 bytes. Updated February 1, 2011.

inkscape-unicorn.gcode

30111 bytes. Updated February 1, 2011.

This work is licensed GNU - GPL.

Description

One problem that has often plagued users of the MakerBot Unicorn[1] is the long and confusing chain of tools required to go from a nice vector drawing to a G-Code file that can be plotted from ReplicatorG.

mifga did an awesome tutorial[2] that made it possible to understand the steps needed to work all of these tools, but it was obvious that something better was needed.

So, I made a mashup of scribbles.py[3] and the Egg-Bot Driver for Inkscape[4] to bring you the inkscape-unicorn extension for Inkscape!

Once installed, this extension allows you to save files in “MakerBot Unicorn G-Code (*.gcode)” format!

Learn more, download, and contribute at the GitHub page for this project:

https://github.com/martymcguire/inkscape-unicorn

If you’re desperate, you can also download the zip file attached to this thing, but it is guaranteed to be out of date. Please get the latest version from GitHub. :)

Thanks to langfordw for the original Unicorn Logo[5] used as an example on this Thing.

UPDATES!

I’m updating and adding features to this script as my first days for the February Thing-A-Day. Updates below:

• Day 1, Release: http://thing-a-day.com/thing-a-day-2011-1-unicorn-pen-plotter-extens
• Day 2, Registration and Homing: http://thing-a-day.com/new-features-for-inkscape-unicorn-pen-registr
• Day 3, Copies and Continuous Plotting: http://thing-a-day.com/thing-a-day-2011-3-copies-and-continuous-plot

[1] Unicorn - http://store.makerbot.com/makerbot-unicorn-pen-plotter-kit.html
[2] mifga’s Unicorn Tutorial - http://wiki.makerbot.com/unicorn-tutorial-01
[3] scribbles.py - https://github.com/makerbot/Makerbot/tree/master/Unicorn/Scribbles%20Scripts
[4] Egg-Bot Driver for Inkscape - http://code.google.com/p/eggbotcode/
[5] Unicorn Logo by langfordw http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4197

Instructions

From the README:

Install

Copy the contents of src/ to your Inkscape extensions/ folder.

Typical locations include:

• OS X - /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/extensions
• Linux - /usr/share/inkscape/extensions
• Windows - C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions

Usage

• Size and locate your image appropriately:
  • The CupCake CNC build platform size is 100mm x 100mm.
  • Setting units to mm in Inkscape makes it easy to size your drawing.
  • The extension will automatically attempt to center everything.
• Convert all text to paths:
  • Select all text objects.
  • Choose Path | Object to Path.
• Save as G-Code:
  • File | Save a Copy.
  • Select MakerBot Unicorn G-Code (*.gcode).
  • Save your file.
• Preview
  • For OS X, Pleasant3D is great for this.
  • For other operating systems… I don’t know!
• Print!
  • Open your .gcode file in ReplicatorG
  • Set up your Unicorn and pen.
  • Center your build platform.
  • Click the Build button!

This post used to be on Posterous. I rescued my posts before Posterous shut down and am now sharing them here.

I spent some time this weekend making this plugin and today went through the process of releasing it via GitHub and posting it to Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5986

One problem that has often plagued users of the MakerBot Unicorn is the long and confusing chain of tools required to go from a nice vector drawing to a G-Code file that can be plotted from ReplicatorG.

mifga did an awesome tutorial that made it possible to understand the steps needed to work all of these tools, but it was obvious that something better was needed.

So, I made a mashup of scribbles.py and the Egg-Bot Driver for Inkscape to bring you the inkscape-unicorn extension for Inkscape!

Once installed, this extension allows you to save files in “MakerBot Unicorn G-Code (*.gcode)” format!

Learn more, download, and contribute at the GitHub page for this project:

https://github.com/martymcguire/inkscape-unicorn

If you’re desperate, you can also download the zip file attached to this thing, but please consider getting the latest version from GitHub. :)

Thanks to langfordw for the original Unicorn Logo used as an example on this Thing.