DrawBot – Printed Parts

So far I’ve got three types of printed parts:

  1. Spools
    1. These spools hold the monofilament and are friction fit onto the motor shaft.  You can check out the designs on Thingiverse.
  2. Motor Mounts
    1. The Thingiverse page actually has a lot of information about the motor mounts.  They’re designed in OpenSCAD and are mostly parametric.  Since I’m mounting these motors inside a box, the mounts are designed to go into the corners of the box.
  3. John Abella’s Gondola
    1. I haven’t hooked everything up yet, so I don’t know how well this will work.  I can’t wait to find out!
  4. Arduino Mount
    1. I’m kicking around some ideas for how this would work.  Ideally, I’ll end up designing a bracket that the Arduino and motor shield can just snap into.

Posts in the DrawBot Adventure Series
← DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VIDrawBot – The Assembly, Part VII →
  1. Wanna make a DrawBot?
  2. DrawBot Resources and Links: Updated 2012/04/19
  3. DrawBot, the Adventure Begins
  4. DrawBots for the slow learner
  5. DrawBot - Parts Ordered!!!
  6. DrawBot - The Breakdown
  7. DrawBot - Parts Shipped!!!
  8. DrawBot - What would you draw?
  9. DrawBot - The Plan!
  10. DrawBot - The Hacks
  11. DrawBot - Giant Unicorn?
  12. DrawBot - The Delivery?
  13. DrawBot - The Delivery, Part II
  14. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part III
  15. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part I
  16. DrawBot – The Software, Part I (and an existential conversation)
  17. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part IV
  18. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part II
  19. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part III
  20. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part IV
  21. DrawBot – Design Considerations
  22. DrawBot – Halp!!! No - seriously, a little help?
  23. DrawBot – The Face Palm
  24. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part V
  25. DrawBot – The Silver Lining of Failure
  26. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part VI
  27. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part V
  28. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VI
  29. DrawBot – Printed Parts
  30. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VII
  31. DrawBot – The Operation, Part I
  32. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VIII
  33. DrawBot – The Breakdown, Part II
  34. DrawBot – Printing!
  35. DrawBot – Printing, Part II
  36. DrawBot – Why are you crying?
  37. DrawBot – Calibration
  38. DrawBot – Pen Selection
  39. DrawBot – How to Recover from a Stalled Print!
  40. DrawBot – Drawing Success(ish)!!!
  41. DrawBot – Pen Selection, Part II
  42. DrawBot – Onwards and Upwards!
  43. DrawBot – Another Successful(ish) Drawing!, and an Update
  44. Restarting a Stalled DrawBot Drawing
  45. TSP FTW!
  46. Speedier DrawBot Drawings
  47. Two new DrawBot links! And an update!
  48. Excellent DrawBot Slides
  49. Another Drawing Robot!!!

Probably my most popular design ever…

OpenSCAD Pirate Ship designed by MakerBlock, printed by BrazenArtifice

OpenSCAD Pirate Ship designed by MakerBlock, printed by BrazenArtifice


I can’t tell you how giddy I get when I see that someone has printed this and uploaded a picture. So, to the eight people who have done so – thank you!

Printed Pirate Ship

I’ve printed this pirate ship twice and am reasonably satisfied with the result.  The first I printed with support structure and the second without.  I’m still getting used to Skeinforge v35, so I hope to get a better result.  Interestingly, support isn’t really required for the bow!

Oh, OpenSCAD…

One of things I really like about OpenSCAD is how anything I make in it is guaranteed to be manifold.  It’s a solid modeler and by manipulating, adding, and subtracting solids – I should always end up with another solid.  I exported two of the parts necessary for a Pez Powered Disc Shooter only to discover that OpenSCAD refused to compile one of the parts – because that part had some polygons with an incorrect winding order.  Mind, I had no problems exporting the part in the first place – but importing it back?  Nope.

Oh, OpenSCAD, is our love affair over so soon?

Back from Maker Faire SF Bay Area 2011!

I’m exhausted! 1  What a great time!

I got to spend time with my family, see some amazing stuff, meet some great people, and see some old friends.  I also ate some junk food!  Perfect weekend all around.

I got to meet several people for the first time – including beak90, DocProfSky, DNA.  A few people mentioned they liked my OpenSCAD tutorials, which just made my day.

  1. So exhausted I didn’t get to publish this post until just now… [↩]

Help cleaning up an STL?

I’m trying to import this STL of a Mini Cooper on Thingiverse into OpenSCAD without much success. I’ve run it through Netfabb’s cloud service, but that still isn’t fixing the problem.

I have a sweet sweet mashup I’d like to make…  so, do you think you could help out?  Much appreciated!

I’m so giddy!

I can’t wait for OpenSCAD to finish rendering this new object I’ve fashioned out of a DXF file!

Toolpath was basically:

  • Inkscape importing PNG image
  • Convert image to SVG, reduce colors, simplify lines
  • Export to DXF
  • Incorporate extruded DXF into design

It will be mine.  Oh, yes, it will be mine. 12

 

  1. The precious. [↩]
  2. That’s a red herring.  It’s clearly a Doctor Who themed object. [↩]

What’s the best toolpath for SVG to OpenSCAD?

While I have one selfish motive for wanting a reliable toolpath for going from an SVG to OpenSCAD, I’d also like to do a tutorial on this. 1 2.

  • I can export an SVG from Inkscape to a DXF.
  • I can import that same DXF into OpenSCAD.
  • I can’t render the DXF or extrude it into a solid.

I just can’t seem to make OpenSCAD make heads or tails of that DXF.  Is this a problem with the DXF files produced by Inkscape?  A little bit of Googling tells me that Inkscape v0.48 (the one I’m using) exports in DXF R13 format which includes features that are not well supported by OpenSCAD.  My attempts at finding plugins that will successfully allow Inkscape to expert to DXF R12 format have not been fruitful.

  1. 3D Models with OpenSCAD on Make uses a toolpath that isn’t available in my version of Inkscape
  2. DXF R12 exporter, didn’t work for me
  3. DXF R12 exporter, didn’t work for me either
  4. Yet another DXF R12 exporter that did not work for me
  5. Link suggesting that something called “pstoedit” might be helpful in converting SVG’s to DXF R12′s.
  6. From Photo to Inkscape to DXF to OpenSCAD to MakerBot to Costume Jewelry is an excellent tutorial on the exact toolpath I would like to get working

After MUCH fiddling around I have discovered that the only DXF exporting plugin I can get to work is the one called “Better DXF Output”, NOT to be confused with “Better Better DXF Output.”  Unfortunately, I’ve installed so many of these little plugins I no longer recall exactly which combination of them might actually be working for me.  I’ll do a little investigation and post a short tutorial on how it’s worked for me.

Edit: I’m 85% certain this is the plugin that worked for me.  http://www.bobcookdev.com/inkscape/inkscape-dxf.html

  1. Selfish as in I already have an idea for how I would use this knowledge to make something cool. [↩]
  2. What could it be?  Hint:  It’s related to something that rhymes with “Doctor Who” [↩]

With great power

Comes abuse.  I’ve come to realize that OpenSCAD can indeed be abused.  It’s so easy to import several objects and manipulate them that I wish I had gotten around to learning OpenSCAD a long time ago.  You can do some pretty amazing (and scary) things with just the import and translate functions. 1

And, in retrospect, I probably could have whipped up that Voltron remix in a fraction of the time if I had OpenSCAD at my disposal…

Oh well, that just means the next time I’ll be that much better.

  1. I also scaled Disney’s head to an appropriate size, but it wasn’t compiled by OpenSCAD [↩]