CNC Spirograph

[spalm]

Are you Board? Want to do something really useless with your CNC? Turn it into a Spirograph. I wrote a VB application to generate Gcode. It’s actually kind of fun to watch it getting carved out.

Let me know if it works for you,
Steve

EDIT: Version 1.3 is available in post #22

[santiniuk]

Neat program spalm. I had a bit play to try it out.

I don't get the preview of the circles in the window.

Gcode works fine.

output pic attached for ref.

Cheers....

[Evodyne]

Spalm,

What a cool program. I havn't fiddled with spirographs is 30+ years! Hey-I tried to copy to an XP machine. When I go to run I get an error message "Component richtx32.ocx or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid". Any ideas?

Lance

[ger21]

I accidentally got it to output 25K+ lines of G-code. I had to kill it with the task manager. Also got it to crash if the little circle is set to 0.

[spalm]

Hey,
Sorry guys for any problems, I banged this out in Visual Basic Ver 6. I can see why Microsoft went to VB.net. But I must admit that I had a few smiles playing with a spirograph.

Santiniuk, never seen that one before. For better visuals, I poked around the net and found this link:
Dartmoth Spirograph
They are using the same kind of algorithm as I did. Only they use radius instead of diameter. You can try out the values there, and then convert and plug them into my app.

Evodyne, you are missing the driver for a RichTextBox. I zipped up my set. They should live in the Windows/System32 directory.

Gerry, it’s a toy. You deserve every crash that you get. Seriously, I can range check the input numbers and limit the output if you think that I should post a Ver 1.1.

Steve

[Evodyne]

Spalm,

Hey-copied everything for the ocx to system and I'm good to go. Thanks.

Lance

[ger21]

Originally Posted by spalm Gerry, it’s a toy. You deserve every crash that you get.

Would you be interested in posting the code? Or some math references maybe? I'd like to create a similar AutoCAD VBA macro.

Don't worry about the crashes, just part of the learning curve.

[spalm]

Gerry, look at the link in post #5. It contains the formulas for epicycloids. It also has some java source code at the bottom that reads pretty well.

I knew that I had let options available for the code exploding. Several of them I protected, several of them not. This is always the boring part of programming; protecting your code from users. I saw this as a one time use toy that was not worth that much investment. If anybody thinks I should take it to the next level, I will.

On second thought, I would have loved to have this tool on the day that I got my first machine running, so maybe I will dress it up a bit. (?)

Steve

[santiniuk]

Spalm,

Just checked the program again on a different pc. Preview window works fine. Must be something my end on main pc.

Cool program

Cheers

[the_paco]

Cool little piece of software!

Thanks for sharing!

[Evodyne]

Spalm,

Hey, it's a toy-but it's a fun toy. And those little doodles might nicely decorate small container lids makng them highly decorative. You might put a "max revolutions" limit in that (if the ratios don't quite line up) will only generate a given amount of g-code. I also seem to remember (from well back into childhood, so it's a bit foggy) that the spirograph kit had other shapes you could roll the smaller gears around. I seem to remember a long piece with rounded ends. What would really be neat would be to define a path out of spline sections that represents the big gear. My vote is to fiddle with it a bit more.

Lance

[nuplowboy]

Sweet program! Looks like now I've got some G-code to run whenever my machine's finished! By Tuesday, I should at least have a 2-axis machine that I can tape a marker to and let it spirograph away!

Thanks for posting this, and the XP fixes.