penprint

I made the tool easier to use and cleaned it up a little. I also added the ability to add your own SVGs and some mobile support. I think this might be my last devlog for this project.

I just made the repo and deployed the frontend for the thing on Vercel. However, people cannot generate their own gcode yet from the image, but they can send me images and I can print them and test it out myself! I chose to do this because it felt like a fun way to test the diy pen plotter. Also, i forgot to talk about the pen mounts I 3d printed so I added a picture going over them.

Ok Ok, so it’s drawing stuff now. I was able to rebuild the image storage system and easily generated gcode for the printer. Still, it’s a bit weird when it comes to where to draw the shapes and all.

So I can now (somewhat) parse svgs in the engine. Problem is text and gcode conversion. I am trying to solve Text by using this thing called hershey fonts, which is a font where each letter can be drawn with one line. Unfortunately, this means I have to handle formatting and drawing all by myself. havent done anything on gcode conversion yet

Look there’s a hair on your screen… JUST KIDDING. I actually spent 3 hours trying to figure out how to turn a bezier curve into short little lines so that I can generate instructions that tell the 3d printer where to put the pen. Of course I haven’t figured out how to actually talk to the printer yet… or create any other shapes… Next, I need to do the same thing for drawing circles. Wish me luck!