Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Vectorization of pixel defined print roads actually working properly



In which a very kind Adrian Bowyer takes pity on your narrator.


In my last posting on 21 June, I laid out a method for vectorizing a pixel-defined perimeter. Having read the posting, Adrian Bowyer, a published expert on this sort of thing, took me aside and showed me how to do the vectorization efficiently instead of just at all, the solution I came up with.


Using Adrian's approach, I was able to achieve my goal of getting exact vectorization of the print road and push out the average segment length to well over the 0.3+ mm that was required to assure a print head speed over the major axis of at least 16 mm/sec.


You can see an example of such a vectorization here.  All values, save the last, are in tenths of a millimeter.




The last value in the listbox, "rho/axis" should allow me to adjust the print speed on the fly in G1 statements to assure a constant head velocity for print road segments greater than 0.3 mm in length.


I should be printing ABS parts again by this weekend, which is good since I want to redesign and print one of these.





5 comments:

Alternicity said...

That hand is insanely cool!

Forrest Higgs said...

My reaction precisely. I want two of my very own. :-)

Sven said...

Do you have any files for this or some other robotic hand or just the notion of building one your own and thus designing one?
I'm still tinkering with my Mendel but once done I plan on using a cable twist system to drive a robotic gripper.

Forrest Higgs said...

Andreas was kind enough to scan his drawings of the parts for his hand for me. I plan on using his design, which was made out of cut acrylic sheet as a starting point for my own printed design.

I have another blog which documents the progress of this project at...

http://activetelepresence.blogspot.com

Erik de Bruijn said...

This vectorization is a pretty complex matter!

BTW: That hand is insanely cool! This type of grip is much better than what most people are wearing (that either crushes or drops objects). I have a relative that would like to try it (he only has one arm). Even those prosthetics that only western people can afford are pretty cumbersome...
Anyway, if the files end up on Thingiverse I'd love to experiment along! (and or extrude the DXF's into SCAD designs, etc.)