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  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by scorch View Post
    Also, feel free to post or send a picture of something you made using F-Engrave.
    A couple of simple things borrowed from inkscape's open clip art library. Test pieces #'s 1 & 2.

    Thank you very much !

    Attached Images Attached Images
    Anyone who says "It only goes together one way" has no imagination.


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    Unless my eyes are deceiving me, these appear to be raised (embossed) and not carved down into the wood!
    Looks great!

    If so, I may have missed it in the documentation, but how did you pull this off?

    Last edited by Vogavt; 08-22-2012 at 08:40 AM.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Vogavt View Post
    Unless my eyes are deceiving me, these appear to be raised (embossed) and not carved down into the wood!
    A combination of glossy finish and poor photography skills, although I suspect this software can v-carve embossed letters in the right hands.

    Has an example bitmap been posted somewhere ? Does it need to be straight black&white or grey scale is allowed ? The terminology of bitmap files is a bit confusing to the uninitiated.

    Anyone who says "It only goes together one way" has no imagination.


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    The raised effect is a common optical illusion. The same thing happens with photos of moon craters making them appear as bumps rather than depressions.



  5. #25
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    Default Bitmaps and V-Carving

    Quote Originally Posted by cyclestart View Post
    Has an example bitmap been posted somewhere ? Does it need to be straight black&white or grey scale is allowed ? The terminology of bitmap files is a bit confusing to the uninitiated.
    @cyclestart Thanks for posting the pictures.

    F-engrave input images should only be two colors (black and white). The PBM (Portable Bit Map) format only supports black and white images. Images can be converted to PBM using GIMP (GNU image Manipulation Program) or ImageMagick's convert. (PBM format is preferred but F-engrave will also accept black and white images in PBM, PGM, PPM, or BMP formats using: "File" - "Open PBM/DXF File" from the menu bar )

    A couple of additional notes:
    A key setting when v-carving images is the Flip Normals option in the V-Carve Settings. This setting will change whether the inside or outside of the image is carved.

    For now F-Engrave treats images as a font character (specifically the character "F"). I am working on changing the interface for images and DXF files.

    The attached BMP works with F-Engrave (The design is public domain from wikimedia)

    Scorch

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  6. #26
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    Very happy to have found this! It took me some time to figure out it could just be opened in linuxcnc which makes it very easy!

    Found a small "spelling mistake" that lead to perplexing milling times.

    When you make changes to the .py file self.funits.set("m/min") # Options are "in/min" and "m/min" (line 1181 in my case) it gave 1000's of minutes milling time.

    Turns out m/min should be mm/min When I thought I gave the feed rate at 1 meter a minute I actually gave 1 mm a minute. That is a factor of 1000 too slow

    Last edited by CaptainVee; 08-25-2012 at 12:14 PM.
    Sven http://www.cnczone.com/forums/diy-cnc-router-table-machines/320812-aluminium-1250x1250x250-router.html


  7. #27
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    Thanks for the detailed explanation scorch

    Quote Originally Posted by scorch View Post
    The attached BMP works with F-Engrave
    Then I'm doing something wrong. (see attachment)

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    Anyone who says "It only goes together one way" has no imagination.


  8. #28
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    A little tip for Ubuntu 10.04 users.
    The Potrace n the repositories is old (I believe the problem is it doesn't support dxf)
    Potrace 1.10 is needed for f-engrave.
    Works as advertised now.

    Anyone who says "It only goes together one way" has no imagination.


  9. #29
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    Being able to set your origin would be great.
    I occasionally wrap text around say a quarter of a circle but I end up with a gcode file that spans the whole circle not just the text. It's difficult to set home when the file is "bigger" then what my machine can move; so I have to fudge things. Also, perhaps different text in one message would be awesome.
    Overall I love what you've done, I just made an "Elan Brand" sign(He jokes that his name is found with many brands) up for a friend that used 2 different fonts and it turned out great.



  10. #30
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    I've been trying to v-carve an image made up of circles. Note: The attached image is bmp, not pbm.
    Will not happen.

    I've tried both dxf and pbm. Dxf does not show live plot but the time it takes to calculate seems normal. The file I can then save to axis is empty, no moves except for G0 Z#1 twice.

    Opening it as a Pbm makes a different kind of image. It is nice but not the pattern of dots I'm after.

    It seems sort of similar to something else I've noticed: In some areas of dxf files not all parts of letters/paths are carved, even though the detail seems big enough.

    Attached Images Attached Images
    Sven http://www.cnczone.com/forums/diy-cnc-router-table-machines/320812-aluminium-1250x1250x250-router.html


  11. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by CaptainVee View Post
    Note: The attached image is bmp, not pbm.
    The attachment appears to be png, making it kind of hard to play along at home. (Not that I'm confident of being any help, but maybe others ?)

    By any chance are the dots part of a larger image, sort of like other carving programs imitate photographs using lines ? Playing a wild guess here as it's an idea I've been playing with.

    Anyone who says "It only goes together one way" has no imagination.


  12. #32
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    I have been on vacation so I am playing catch-up on the forum posts.

    @cyclestart
    - Great tip for users regarding the version of potrace. I am glad you were able to resolve the issue.

    @jm82792
    - I think the origin drop down menu might help your origin issues (the green and red axis will move on the display as you choose different options). You can set an offset for the origin in the general settings dialog. (the offset origin in the general settings is much more clumsy)

    - Different fonts would be nice but it would be nontrivial the way the code is written right now. One other option would be to make the text as you would like it to look in Inkscape then export it as a DXF to F-engrave. (Note: you need to convert the text objects to paths in Inkscape for this to work correctly)

    @CaptainVee
    - Thanks for the catch on the typo in the .py file. I will correct it in the next revision.

    - If you do pretty much anything after the v-carve calculation is complete (other than save the v-carve g-code tool path to g-code) the v-carve g-code data is reset and you need to recalculate the v-carve tool path).

    - As cyclestart mentioned it is tough to troubleshoot without all or some of the image you are working with. The attached image is extremely low resolution so it would be tough to get any good results with it. I am guessing the size was reduced for posting. Depending on the software you use to export a DXF file you may get strange results. The potrace output is in the proper format and has an ordering convention compatible with F-engraves conventions so the results are predictable.

    Scorch



  13. #33
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    Yes indeed, it is a picture made up of dots of various sizes.
    It is done in inkscape. I found a tutorial on youtube explaining it



    I found another way by searching for "half tone inkscape"

    Edit: seems the "clone tile dots" way is the way to go if you want to go and drill a lot of holes with v-carving.

    I think I got the calculation of the dxf going now, had to increase the size of the "text height" Will take a looooooong time to calculate... about 105 minutes.

    Last edited by CaptainVee; 08-30-2012 at 02:41 AM.
    Sven http://www.cnczone.com/forums/diy-cnc-router-table-machines/320812-aluminium-1250x1250x250-router.html


  14. #34
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    I got the first result from my dotted picture.

    It seems it only wanted to do the biggest circles. Here are two screenshots.

    The first is the view in f-engrave, the second the view in axis.

    It needed to have the "letter height" set very specifically or it would not start, In my case 220 mm.
    It took about an hour to calculate.

    Does it matter what sizes are set for the cutter or other parameters?

    Attached Images Attached Images
    Sven http://www.cnczone.com/forums/diy-cnc-router-table-machines/320812-aluminium-1250x1250x250-router.html


  15. #35
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    I have not been able to recreate the problem with ignoring the small circles. Did the status bar say 100% complete when it stopped?

    It is also interesting that you say the calculation didn't work with the size set too small. I was not able to recreate this problem either.

    I would love to see the exact image and a .ngc file saved by F-Engrave so I could investigate further. If you don't mind you could send them to my e-mail address that is in the f-engrave help menu.

    Additional long winded comments start here:
    Yes the v-carve calculation can take a very long time for complex images. The v-carve algorithm uses a brute force approach. The one tip that can make things go a little faster is to set the v-carve bit diameter as small as you expect to need. The algorithm checks the distance from the current line segment to the other segments an ignores the segments greater than the max diameter away for the detailed calculations.

    The text height is the output image height when dealing with DXF and PBMs. Most of the other setting on the main window (line thickness cut depth) do not need changing when dealing with images. You do need to make sure that the settings in the v-carve settings are correct. Also minimizing the safe height will reduce time during rapid moves during machining.

    If you are using mm units you probably want to increase the sub-step length to something like .25. The "V-bit Angle" and "V-Bit Diameter" need to be set to match your bit (also see above comment in this post about the V-Bit Diameter)

    Scorch



  16. #36
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    Default Halftones

    Creating halftones in Inkscape has been an interesting diversion. Although I was able to create the g-code and cut a test image, in the end I thing a more specialized piece of software like the one featured on Hack A Day would give more efficient g-code output than F-engrave for this application.

    Creating halftone pictures with a CNC machine - Hack a Day

    Note: When exporting halftones to F-engrave from Inkscape it is better to saved to a DXF file rather than exporting to a bitmap file.

    Scorch



  17. #37
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    Thanks Scorch. I'll look in to the halftone software later on. But I did use dxf, tried pbm for good measure.

    The mystery of v-carving of circles deepens.

    I wanted to generate the text "Af en toe walnootolie aanbrengen"
    Letter height 20 mm, font kochiminco.cxf, 60 degree 3 mm bit.

    In the situation above the i does not get its dot when generating gcode. If I delete the sentence and then write "walnootolie" it does!

    Also, the "f" gets something added that is not present in the font.

    "Walnootolie af en toe aanbrengen" gets no dotted I and the extra bit on the F.

    "Walnootolie f" gets the I dotted but also the extra bit on the f.
    "Walnootolie Walnootolie Walnootolie" gets the I dotted on all three I's.

    Ah, "Wafnootolie f" gets the thing that should not be there on both f's, maybe that is a font thing.

    Sven http://www.cnczone.com/forums/diy-cnc-router-table-machines/320812-aluminium-1250x1250x250-router.html


  18. #38
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    @CaptainVee
    What version of F-engrave are you using? Version 0.7 is the latest and has some significant improvements over older versions. (this may account for the extra part on the "f")

    In the first situation with "Af en toe walnootolie aanbrengen" does everything show up except the dot for the "i"? Did you write the g-code to a file and preview it in MACH or LinuxCNC (EMC2) to verify?

    Are you using the windows executable ".exe" file or do you have python installed. If you have python installed which version of python is it?


    I did notice that during the calculation it may appear that the dot on the "i" does not get filled in but after the calculation the dot is black indicating that the dot will be cut. This is probably not your issue because this happens in all cases for the dot in that font.

    If anyone else can duplicate these issues please speak up.
    Scorch



  19. #39
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    Q: In the first situation with "Af en toe walnootolie aanbrengen" does everything show up except the dot for the "i"?

    Indeed, that is how it happens and so far only with that sentence. The dot does not show up in preview and also not in linuxcnc.

    I run f-engrave 0.7 on xubuntu 12.04, from within linuxcnc-simulator.

    In other sentences or words, the "i" allways shows up.
    Edit:
    I've tried "Af en toe walnootolie aanbrengen Af en toe walnootolie aanbrengen", it misses the dots too, in the code.

    As far as I have noticed, if the dot misses in preview, it misses in the g-code.

    I can not see if the extra bit on the "f" shows up in the code, I'd have to mill it to be able to see.


    Edit:
    Just did my first engraving instead of v-carving. Took me a while before I found out it was actually as simple as it was.

    Scorch, you have done an amazing job, well done!


    Last edited by CaptainVee; 09-01-2012 at 01:28 AM.
    Sven http://www.cnczone.com/forums/diy-cnc-router-table-machines/320812-aluminium-1250x1250x250-router.html


  20. #40
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    If you could provide a screen shot of the extra part on the "f" that would help me look into that issue.

    I will try to dig into the missing dots.

    (I have not yet reproduced either of these issues. So fixing the problems will be very difficult.)

    Scorch



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