Stereolithography file to GCode

[chithan]

hi frnds...am doing a project on rapidprototyping...i hv converted the 3D model to .stl format...now i need to get the coordinates from the .stl file so that i can focus the laser beam on those coordinates to cure them to form a solid model...is there any softwares available to get the coordinates?...

[andy55]

opencamlib has functions for dropping down along the z-axis a cutter at a given (x,y) position.
There's also functions for pushing the cutter into contact with the STL model along the x and y axes. If you do this for a lot of x and y values you get a mesh and you can trace around the mesh to get waterline loops.
These paths are useful for milling, not so sure what the correct approach for 3D printing or laser-curing is.

http://code.google.com/p/opencamlib/

AW

[dhr1]

Hello 2all,

Can anyone tell me that how to decode the .stl file or how can I read that file??

I have one .stl file but whenever I tried to open it in notpad or wordpad, it comes in some unreadable form.
So anyone have some code or something like that to read this file?

Thanks in Advanced,
~Dhr

[andy55]

this python script should be able to read most STL files:
http://code.google.com/p/opencamlib/...ib/STLTools.py

[dhr1]

hey andy,
thanks very much.

I dont know python, but i will convert it into java or c++ language.

Thanks again..

~Dhr1

[dhr1]

Hello,

I am not able to find converter python to java.
So you have any code that read stl in java?

Thanks,
~Dhr1

[andy55]

here is an STLReader class in c++ which reads an STL file (possibly only ASCII, not binary)
http://code.google.com/p/opencamlib/.../stlreader.cpp
it should be fairly straightforward to convert to Java if you want that...

[dhr1]

Hello,

Thanks a lot for this.

~Dhr1

[rweatherly]

Here is the description for the binary file:

"Binary STL files consist of a 80 byte header line that can be interpreted as a comment string. The following 4 bytes interpreted as a long integer give the total number of facets. What follows is a normal and 3 vertices for each facet, each coordinate represented as a 4 byte floating point number (12 bytes in all). There is a 2 byte spacer between each facet. The result is that each facet is represented by 50 bytes, 12 for the normal, 36 for the 3 vertices, and 2 for the spacer."

I wrote a binary to decimal converter in VB if you want to program it.

[dhr1]

Hello sweatherly,

thanks for ut reply.
I am very thankful to you if you can post your VB code for binary file read.

~Dhr1

[rweatherly]

It may take a few hours to find the code, but I will post it ASAP.

[dhr1]

ok.
take your time.
I am trying with myself also.