Originally Posted by Deviant Ignore the rollers.
Each section that is in the throat of the machine is rolled forward and locked.
The wife will manually advance that part. So each run will be 6' by 9inchs or whatever the throat is.
I think I've decided how to do the movement. Just not sure on the line graphic or polyline to g-code.
Is there a software that will trace bmp/gifs to create the lines/polyline?
How do you have the repeated patterns or scaling?
I'm looking at using steppers. The needle shouldn't be a problem, the problem comes when it wants to jump from a1 to z9, without sewing between. That's why I said that the pattern needed to be a continous line. |
If the fabric etc. will be advanced manually, then that creates another problem in that the machine software would loose it's position from home position each time it was advanced manually. The work around would be to have the system go back to the start position each time after it had completed a pattern. More on this below.
Also, from the above description, it is my understanding that the pattern would be sewn only the depth of the throat of the sewing machine, but the entire width of the quilt. Is this correct?
There is software that will convert bitmaps, jpg and other type files to a dxf format which can then be automatically converted to g-code.
With the fabric being advanced manually, you would only need to create a repeating pattern once. The pattern would be as deep as the throat depth, and as wide as the quilt. When the pattern was sewn, the program would end automatically. The fabric would be manually advanced, and the same program would be run again and so forth until the quilt was completed. One could have more than one pattern. Example: Run program 1 pattern -- advance quilt -- Run program 2 pattern -- advance quilt -- Run program 1 -- advance -- Run program 2 and so forth.
Scaling can be accomplished in several art type programs, and also as a dxf file before the g-code is created. The scaling will not be a problem once you get the proper kind of graphics software. You could use Corel Draw, but people have reported problems with the dxf output from this program as it apparently has some problems when outputting all the graphics information. I have not used Photoshop, so I cannot comment on it. Bitmaps can be generated and used, but I don't have any experience with using them or converting them to g-code. There are tons of info on graphic packages and conversion on the site.
Hope this has helped.