Month: August 2018

A guide to using your 3D printer as a handwriting robot!

It seems people are very interested in the post I made earlier, so here’s a tutorial if you want to try things for yourself! I tried to make this as simple and easy to understand as I could because I personally had a very hard time figuring everything out.So, here it is!3D print a pen holder for your machine:Try to find a pen holding model for your specific printer, here’s the one I used for my Ender 3. Print it out with your settings optimized for lots of infill and a slower print speed to make it durable. attaching this on the printer should be straight forward from hereDownload the GitHub Repository:Download the Handwriting Synthesis GitHub repository, and save it anywhereInstall Python:Download Python version 3.5.2 and restart your computer. Other versions will probably work, I’m just including exactly what I’m using.Install the dependencies for the project:Run the Command Prompt as Administrator and CD to the place where you downloaded the Handwriting Synthesis Repository, as shown belowhttps://i.redd.it/pul5zpshw4h11.pngNow type pip install -r requirements.txt into the CMD and hit enter, this will take a while. This part is finicky because only certain versions of Python seem to support all the dependencies required for this project, I know 3.5.2 works though.Generating the Handwriting:https://ift.tt/2vZr7Sy quickly test things out, you can simply edit the four lines shown above in the ‘demo.py’ file to whatever you want, using the Python IDLE.Running the code will take a very long time because the ‘demo.py’ file contains 4 separate Demos which contain lots of text. You can comment out the others if you’re impatient, but they do show how all the features work so I suggest leaving them.Here are a few dumb limitations to keep in mind:-Letters such as Q and X don’t seem to work for some styles, the script will stop and give you an error. probably because there wasn’t enough data to implement these rarely used letters.-There’s also a 75 character limit to each line.Turning the generated handwriting into Gcode:Download the latest version of Inkscape and open it. In Inkscape, navigate to ‘file’, ‘document properties’, and change the height and width to match your build plate, also change the measurement to ‘mm’.https://ift.tt/2N1yGyH to the ‘img’ folder in the Handwriting-Synthesis repository, and locate the ‘Usage_Demo.svg’ file. Drag it into Inkscape. Then right click it and click ‘ungroup’https://ift.tt/2PoHjoL you continue!!Take a look at how far your printer needs to go before the pen is above the writing area, take note of this number and make sure the pen never goes below it when creating the Gcode! For example, in the picture shown below the offset is 36mm, as shown on the LCD screen. You’ll need to do this for all 4 corners of smaller pieces of paper such as letters, so you know where the boundaries are.https://ift.tt/2N2crZu, keeping in mind the offset, use the measuring scale on the top and left side of Inkscape to arrange the lines of handwriting however you like. Then do ctrl+A to select everything, and navigate to the ‘Path to Gcode’ as shown in the picture below.https://ift.tt/2vUlu8u to the preferences tab and change the directory to something else!! The default one will not work. Also change the ‘Z safe height’ to something much lower, around 1-2mm. Once you’re done changing settings, be sure to click back to the ‘Path to Gcode’ tab before clicking apply. You will get an error about “unexpected information” but it should still work after you dismiss the popup.https://ift.tt/2L8zobx that’s it!!You can just close Inkscape once it finishes loading, the Gcode will automatically save to wherever you set the directory to. Simply get your bed perfectly level, so that a nice defined line can be seen across the whole bed when you move the pen along Z=0, and you’re all set.One last thing, VERY IMPORTANT!You need to Auto Home immediately before starting a print! If you don’t, the pen can and will crash into the bed and break something because the printer assumes it’s already in the Auto Home position when it starts (yes, I learned the hard way).https://ift.tt/2vYNiIF all set!Apart from that, you should be lazily producing ‘handwritten’ thank you notes in no time :D. Have fun!!! I can answer any questions anyone might have in the commentsEDIT: Fixed text linked to websites, whoops https://ift.tt/2L7zccE