Mifga did an awesome tutorial that made it possible to understand the steps needed to work all of these tools, but it was obvious that something better was needed. One problem that has often plagued users of the MakerBot Unicorn is the long and confusing chain of tools required to go from a nice vector drawing to a G-Code file that can be plotted from ReplicatorG. Fixing that and slightly increasing the offset to 0.Inkscape-unicorn.gcode 30111 bytes. Not perfect because I noticed that the head was not as rigid as it should, because I did not tighten up the screws enough :-(. The outer corners were fine, but the inner corners were still somewhat round and not well aligned: While with the swivels and optimized tool path on the right the sharp-edged star was cut-out pretty good. Without the optimized tool path the one on the left was not able to turn properly the knife properly, tearing off the vinyl. ![]() So I tried something else with different angles and sharp corners: Star with sharp corners The corners were not as sharp as they should. But the corners still look ok because of the small 0.25 mm delta. There is not much difference, only that the start on the left is about 0.5 mm smaller as expected. I did on my machine, and the result was interesting: Red (no swivels), Green (with swivels) Simulating tool path with Camoticsīecause Carbide Motion did filter out standalone F (feed) G-Codes (see this forum entry), I worked around this with adding feed codes to each move code as below, with commenting out the original feed rate change command: G-Codes with Feedsįinally, use the Menu Export > Optimize and Export Shape Export G-Code Note: If you don’t know about it: Camotics (see links at the end of the article) is a great tool to follow and simulate a tool path. Now you can see the swivels added to the toolpath: Swivels added to Tool Path My knife has on offset of 0.25 mm, so enter this as ‘diameter’: Drag Knife added as toolĪssign the tool to the shape with the desired cut depth and feed rate: Tool assigned In dxf2gcode open the file with the menu File > Open:Ĭonfigure your machine using the menu Options > Postprocessing configuration: Postprocessing optionsįor my machine (Shapeoko) I had to remove the M3/M8 and M9/M5 codes (no need for cooling and Carbide Motion does not like multiple commands on the same line): Removed G-Codes for Carbide MotionĬonfigure the machine with using the menu Options > Machine Type > Drag KnifeĪdd a tool using the menu Options > Configuration > Tools Table. Let’s check it with a star shaped cut: Below is a small star created in Inkscape and then saved as. The solution is to modify the path with small ‘swivels’ like this: Toolpath with swivels in the cornersĪdding this swivels by hand is complicated: there are ways to add this with an Excel sheet, or one has to buy tools like Cut2D Pro which do that tool path optimization.īut actually there is an open source tool which helps: dfx2gcodeĭxf2gcode is a very useful open source program available on SourceForge to translate dxf ( Drawing Interchange Format) into G-Code. ![]() Even more, the corners will not be correct by that offset if the tool path follows the line: Tool and Cut Path Of using a design not having corners like the one I used in one of my first projects:īut obviously this does not work well if I want to have corners. ![]() So what I can do is simply avoid corners and round them instead. So ideally the moves are smooth and no sharp corners, because with corners the concept has a problem. Obviously it is a bad idea to move the head in opposite directions. The offset allows the blade to turn while the head is moving.
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