Category: Software

After once again figuring out how to read a vernier height gage, I measured the height of each end of the MPCNC rails:

The process:

• Position the gage near the end of the gantry’s travel
• Twiddle the knurled ring to lower the probe (a.k.a. lathe bit) until …
• It firmly captures the paper slip, then …
• Twiddle the ring the other way until …
• The paper barely moves
• Read the vernier and take a picture

So the numbers come out one paper thickness higher than the actual rail height; subtract 0.1 mm = 4 mil to get the true height:

In round numbers, the difference is under 0.3 mm along each rail.

The outer numbers on the lower sketch show the difference between each reading and the lowest value along that axis: the left rear corner is (roughly) 0.5 mm higher than the right front. The numbers inside the square give the additional height, rounded to sensible values, required to raise the low corners.

Which means you can’t plot at, say, Z=-0.2 mm to reduce the pen loading, because the pen doesn’t uniformly touch the paper across the entire plot:

These images have been perspective & aspect ratio corrected, then ruthlessly contrast-stretched to make the traces visible; the lighting isn’t that awful in person!

With the plot at Z=-0.2, the legends toward the front came out OK, but they’re missing along the far edge. The Spirograph traces go completely missing toward the left rear as the pen rises away from the paper, although I think we’re also seeing some ripples in the paper sheet.

Although such a small error probably makes no difference to a wood router, let’s see what we can do.

Manually editing the G-Code to put successive traces at 0.1 mm increments from Z=-0.3 to Z=-0.6 mm, then replotting on the same piece of paper, shows the problem a bit better:

All of the legends remain at Z=-0.2, because I wasn’t up for editing every pen-down command.

Even at Z=-0.6 mm, the pen doesn’t quite touch in the left rear corner. Previously, I’d been plotting at a nice, round Z=-1.0 mm, which worked fine. I didn’t run any tests below Z=-0.6, but I think Z=-0.8 would draw a complete plot.

That agrees reasonably well with the height gage measurements.

It’s obviously impossible to re-level the rails by dinking around with the corner post lengths, because I can’t move the EMT in precise increments and it’d never stay in that position anyway. Instead, I should slide shims under the three lowest corner feet to raise them enough to match the left rear corner.

An improved version of my GCMC Spirograph pattern generator, now with better annotation and tool changes:

The GCMC code sets the stator and rotor gear tooth counts, the rotor diameter, and the pen offset using a pseudo-random number generator. This requires randomizing the PRNG seed, which I do in the calling script with the nanosecond of the current second: rnd=$(date +%N).

The G-Code file name also comes from the timestamp:

ts=$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)
fn='Spiro_'${ts}'.ngc'
# blank line to make the underscore visible

Which means you must call the Bash script slowly to generate a pile o’ plots:

for i in {1..60} ; do sh /mnt/bulkdata/Project\ Files/Mostly\ Printed\ CNC/Patterns/spiro.sh ; sleep 1 ; done

Sift through the heap with drag-n-drop action using an online G-Code previewer. There seems no clean way to convert G-Code to a bitmap on the command line, although you can do it manually, of course.

The GCMC program spits out the G-code for one plot at a time, so the Bash script calls it four times to fill a sheet of paper with random patterns:

for p in $(seq 4)
do
  rnd=$(date +%N)
  gcmc -D Pen=$p -D $Paper -D PRNG_Seed=$rnd $Flags $LibPath -q "$Spirograph" >> $fn
done

The -q parameter tells GCMC to not include the prolog and epilog files, because the calling script glues those onto the lump of G-Code for all four plots.

The -D Pen=$p parameter tells the GCMC program which “tool” to select with a Tn M6 tool change command before starting the plot. Although plotter pens have a well-defined position in the holder and a pretty nearly constant length, you must have a tool length probe installed and configured:

Set the overall sheet size in inches or millimeters to get a plot centered in the middle of the page with half-inch margins all around:

Paper='PaperSize=[16.5in,14in]

With all that in hand, those good old black ceramic-tip pens give impeccable results:

The surviving ones, anyhow. I must apply my collection of Sakura Micron pens to this task.

The other three colors come from fiber pens with reasonably good tips:

They’re a lot like diatoms: all different and all alike.

The GCMC and Bash source code as a GitHub Gist:

GCMC includes single-stroke fonts derived from Hershey fonts, so I added a legend to the Spirograph Shakedown generator:

Obviously, plotting 2.5 mm tall characters at 3000 mm/min = 50 mm/s isn’t a Good Idea on a less-than-absolutely-rigid CNC machine.

Slowing down to 250 mm/min = 4.2 mm/s produces much better results:

A closer look, albeit with less-than-crisp focus:

This isn’t a conclusive test, but it reminds me that Speed Kills.

The green plotter pen started life with a standard 0.3 mm felt nib, but it’s worn somewhat wider over the intervening years decades. Those 2.5 mm characters would look better coming from a narrow ceramic pen, which would require a pen change before doing the legend; using 4 mm characters would produce better results.

The line spacing is 110% of the font X height, which obviously isn’t quite enough. Something on the order of 150% should look better.

This GCMC code (including those mods) produces the legend:

feedrate(250mm);

textsize = [4.0mm,4.0mm];
textat = [0.5*PlotSize.x/2,-PlotSize.y/2 + 2*textsize.y];

textpath = typeset("Seed: " + PRNG_Seed + "  Stator: " + StatorTeeth + "  Rotor: " + RotorTeeth,FONT_HSANS_1);
scalepath = scale(textpath,textsize);
placepath = scalepath + textat;
engrave(placepath,1.0mm,-1.0mm);

textpath = typeset("Offset: " + L + "  Lobes: " + Lobes + "  Turns: " + Turns,FONT_HSANS_1);
scalepath = scale(textpath,textsize);
placepath = scalepath + textat + [-,-1.5*textsize.y];
engrave(placepath,1.0mm,-1.0mm);