The infamous Unicorn Logo!

This is a great first print to test out your Makerbot Unicorn Pen Plotter ( thingiverse.com/thing:4185 )

Note: Not only does the logo look pretty awesome on just about anything (see the picture of my latest robotics project for school), but also the sound of the Makerbot drawing it is just phenomenal.

I battle-tested this script at Maker Faire NYC 2010 -- printing hundreds and hundreds of unicorns to be taken up eagerly by even the least likely candidates for receiving a unicorn drawing -- a real tribute to Will's logo design!

I have been using and loving the MakerBot Unicorn Pen Plotter for two months now -- am currently using the tool to create what is looking to be a rather involved animation project. One of the first adjustments I made to the python tool "Scribbles.py" (based on "Lunchlines" from the Frostruder project) was to jump into the included sub-scripts and adjust the pre- and post-print gcode commands in "context.py" so that the print cycle included a machine halt in a platform retrieval position before returning the pen to the ready-to-print position. After accomplishing this first step proved easy ("Scribbles.py" is quite hackable!), I added a few other neat helper tricks: disengaging the steppers before each dialog box for last minute fine-tune adjustments to position, a pre-print registration test (a dot to show where x0,y0 falls), a post-print musical riff (why not?), and an automatic height increment to drop 0.1 mm for each page peeled away from a sticky note pad. I used these tools together in the gcode included below to create an optimized, low-supervision-required print-to-pad version of the unicorn logo (below) that is an ideal early print for a new MakerBot Unicorn Pen Plotter owner. I'm also including the context.py file for your perusal. NOTE that the secret to this script is that if you agree to "Print the Next Sheet" an absolute position adjustment drops the pen tool 0.1mm to the next sheet down ... but while the pen is in the "up" position. And then each new page re-declares the current position to be x0, y0, z0 keeping all the math right for the next drawing. So this script takes the endless adjustment and guessing out of preparing to print so that the tool always starts and ends in the best position to print, with the height adjustment to make printing to a new sheet work without adjustment.

While R2-D2 & C-3PO certainly need no introduction, if you haven't heard of the fabulously cute Keepon robot, then you must check out its performance in the Spoon music videos "I Turn My Camera On" and "Don't You Evah." (I'm going to pair "famous" robots with actual "robot robots" in these releases.)

A series of g-code releases of plottable/drawable "favorite robots." I'm kickstarting this effort, but I intend this to be extended/revised/and re-ordered at will by any and all. Rather than ranking these, I'd suggest you get your favorite robot in there by grabbing an image (line drawings are easiest to process!), auto-trace (or hand-trace) them in Inkscape, Illustrator, or Autotracer.org, export a DXF, cleaning it up & explode it in QCAD (even the free demo edition), and then use the scribbles tools (read about this in the MakerBot wiki) to generate the g-code needed for the release. While these images are for the MakerBot Unicorn Pen Plotter, feel free to adapt them to the Frostruder or other pen plotter tools. There are also better images out there -- I encourage you all to out do me here!

I, for one, believe there should be more "robot" things in the MakerBot community. Sure, there are actual robot
parts and even a few things that when assembled are in fact working robots … but where are more models and images of the robots that inspired us/dared us to make robots in the first place?

Because, frankly, making a robot on your robot….what could be better?

I created and printed these images (minus text) at MakerFaire NYC 2010 for any and all who requested them. These images take about 25min to print...but that is because I left a lot of details in stippling etc to create tone. I'll be happy to include SVG files, gcode files, and dxf files for those wishing to re-run these processes or hack on scribbles.py.

If anyone would work on a solid, trustworthy Inkscape-to-DXF plugin that preserves layers and doesn't fail most of the time, i would kiss you. Oh, really I would. At this time, Inkscape on Windows and Linux are doing the DXF conversion best. There are some promising plugs, but currently I have to do a lot of editing in qcad to get to where I want to be.

UPDATE: I have found new promising routes to DXF that not only produce better results, but which print CRAZY fast. So I have pulled the old DXF GCode releases of these pieces as the new ones print in, say 12 min instead of 30min. (And can handle the text more gracefully.)

I created this quick vector-based variant of the original Unicorn Logo for MakerBot Unicorn Tutorial #01.

I have been taking the vector-files (Illustrator files) of a series of MakerBot giveaway stickers and reworking them in Inkscape to work well for printing using the MakerBot Unicorn pen plotter.

Here is a Unicorn printable version of the Thomas Edison TSP Art line work by dnewman!

deriv of: thingiverse.com/thing:4399 but tinier!

I have been doing a lot of work creating original illustrations sourced from old photographs and daguerreotypes, and what better drawing for Halloween than a portrait of Edgar Allan Poe! I have more like this, but this is my favorite.

I just made this quickly for the "Favorite Robots Design Challenge – Single-Pass" challenge. Picard is my favorite Starship captain (yes, even above Kirk - bit.ly/d36lr2) and he's also my favorite Borg.

It was traced from this: memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:LocutusOfBorg2367.jpg

This is an entry in the favorite robot drawing contest.

You know this turret. It's so polite and friendly! Don't you want to be it's friend?

Are you still there?

This is an entry in the "Favorite Robots" contest.

Spirit is one of the Mars rovers, and operated 28 times longer than planned in an amazingly hostile environment. Go Spirit!

Here is AstroBoy! AstroBoy can be printed out, or drawn out, better said, with your Unicorn!
AstroBoy is my favorite Animated Robot!
This my first ever drawing I turn into gcode, and dxf. This is also for the Unicorn contest.
Hope you like it!
ⒶⓢⓣⓡⓞⒷⓞⓎ
Ⓤⓝⓘⓒⓞⓡⓝ

When you draw this, it will come out like the second picture to the left.

-I uploaded the jpg file, but it won't appear in the download links-

Here is a Tin Robot, of the 50s/60s that can be drawn!
This Tin Robot is my Favorite physical "Robot"!

Its also for the Unicorn Contest.

When you draw this, it will come out like the second picture to the left.

I processed Cyrozap's svg file on through to printable gcode.

A quick example for using this tool.

I re-processed Carmiac's Spirit files from the original SVG files to fix the issues with the text in his gcode.

I reprocessed through to Unicorn gcode from Carmiac's sources.

This is a Greek wall art thing that I laser cut for my girlfriends parents as a Christmas gift. It's a verse from a famous Greek song about a young girl. I think it looks cool because the Greek alphabet has some pretty funky looking letters.

I will place a few more pics and video on sharemake.com of another acrylic one that I also cut.

I will also post the translation once I find it again.

Video of acrylic one being cut: youtube.com/watch?v=yC35P44bzEc

I felt that it was about time Baltimore Node had a Unicorn-plottable logo! You can learn more about this awesome hackerspace at baltimorenode.org.

I've attached all the files I used to create the G-Code for this thing, which tells the story of how you can make your own:

* node_logo.svg - Start with the SVG logo available from the Node wiki.
* node_logo.eps - Use Inkscape to export an EPS file, making sure to convert text to paths.
* node_logo.dxf - Use pstoedit as described on Tony's 2D-to-3D post - tonybuser.com/2d-to-3d - to create a DXF, with simple line approximations of curves. I also ended up using some scaling:

pstoedit -xscale 18 -yscale 18 -dt -f dxf:-polyaslines node_logo.eps node_logo.dxf

* node_logo.gcode - Use scribbles.py from GitHub to convert the DXF into Unicorn G-Code. github.com/makerbot/Makerbot

I used Pleasant3D for its excellent G-Code preview capabilities to check that everything looked reasonable, find a good scaling, etc.

One problem that has often plagued users of the MakerBot Unicorn[1] 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.

mifga did an awesome tutorial[2] that made it possible to understand the steps needed to work all of these tools, but it was obvious that something better was needed.

So, I made a mashup of scribbles.py[3] and the Egg-Bot Driver for Inkscape[4] to bring you the inkscape-unicorn extension for Inkscape!

Once installed, this extension allows you to save files in "MakerBot Unicorn G-Code (*.gcode)" format!

Learn more, download, and contribute at the GitHub page for this project:

github.com/martymcguire/inkscape-unicorn

If you're desperate, you can also download the zip file attached to this thing, but it is guaranteed to be out of date. Please get the latest version from GitHub. :)

Thanks to langfordw for the original Unicorn Logo[5] used as an example on this Thing.

UPDATES!

I'm updating and adding features to this script as my first days for the February Thing-A-Day. Updates below:

* Day 1, Release: thing-a-day.com/thing-a-day-2011-1-unicorn-pen-plotter-extens
* Day 2, Registration and Homing: thing-a-day.com/new-features-for-inkscape-unicorn-pen-registr
* Day 3, Copies and Continuous Plotting: thing-a-day.com/thing-a-day-2011-3-copies-and-continuous-plot


[1] Unicorn - store.makerbot.com/makerbot-unicorn-pen-plotter-kit.html
[2] mifga's Unicorn Tutorial - wiki.makerbot.com/unicorn-tutorial-01
[3] scribbles.py - github.com/makerbot/Makerbot/tree/master/Unicorn/Scribbles%20Scripts
[4] Egg-Bot Driver for Inkscape - code.google.com/p/eggbotcode/
[5] Unicorn Logo by langfordw thingiverse.com/thing:4197

For Thing-A-Day 2011 I'm doing a 1D (writing) vs 2D (visual design) vs 3D (3D modeling) Throwdown!

TAD D1 I completed a chapter of a novella that emerged from an observation about an inchworm. Hmmm, inchworms are interesting....

That night, I checked on Thingiverse -- there were no caterpillars yet! (Snakes, and Snakestas, yes.) So for D2 I cycled from "1D" (prose writing) to "2D" (drawing) and sketched out this caterpillar based on a bunch of photo references. Additional challenge -- to make this drawing fit for the MakerBot Unicorn (so path-only, no fill shading) and force myself to use my clunky old Wacom tablet instead of resorting to a mouse (which is typically what I do).

Now, that I can focus on doing lots of Unicorn illustrations this month is thanks to the incredible work Marty has done to take Scribbles (from Hoeken) and the Eggbot tools -- and create an Inkscape-to-Gcode tool that allows me to skip at least five painful steps of processing.

As a bonus, as I stuck with scribbling this whole thing out within Inkscape and didn't have pstoedit or similar to erase the history of my drawing, this item plots in the order of strokes that I created. So if you print this thing you will be watching me draw it, only via a robot.

Tomorrow for D3 I will be cycling forward to "3D" (3D modeling) and will either attempt to create an elaborate 3Dtin model that is awesome and beautiful, or jump into Sketchup, Alibre, or OpenSCAD to bring more caterpillars to Thingiverse.

This Inkscape SVG file is meant to be processed through schmarty's Unicorn G-Code Extension for Inkscape so that an operator can tune the timings available in the extension. This design is mm based and designed for a 75mm x 75mm drawing space (ie a sticky note!).

Compare your results to the digital version to adjust your settings.

When I first heard of Graffiti Markup Language (GML)[1] I was like "An XML format for graffiti? Pfft!" Then yesterday I was like "Wait, I have a pen plotter."

There are a ton of tags for you to play with at 000000book[2], so go get some files and start tagging ... with post-it notes!

Updates

Watch for updates on GitHub:

github.com/martymcguire/gml2unicorn

[1] graffitimarkuplanguage.com/
[2] 000000book.com/

Making text for Unicorn or EggBot plots isn't always a fun process. Most tools require you to convert text into paths, and even then you get the outlines of shapes, which can often turn messy at small sizes.

mifga pointed me towards the Hershey fonts[1]. They're a set of fonts for vector plotters named after creator Dr. A. V. Hershey who made them for the National Bureau of Standards.

These files are in a weird, weird, format. But after some normalizing, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, I was able to write some code to parse them and spit them back out as SVG! Now you can use these fonts in your Unicorn drawings.

Each SVG contains a layout of one of the Hershey fonts. The hershey_svg.zip file below contains all of the SVG files. The hershey.zip file contains the (cleaned up) original .jhf files. math-drawing.svg is just an example of using these glyphs, including scaling and stretching. I think the result is nice!

To use these in Unicorn plots, you'll want to grab my Unicorn G-Code extension for Inkscape[2].

[1] Hershey fonts - emergent.unpythonic.net/software/hershey
[2] Unicorn output for Inkscape - thingiverse.com/thing:5986

To go with the new multiple-color plotting functionality of my Unicorn G-Code Output extension for Inkscape, here's a new version of the Baltimore Node logo.

This one is ready to plot in 2 layers - all of the black parts at once, followed by all of the blue ones, with a pause at the beginning of each layer to allow a pen change.

I also made use of my Hershey Fonts in SVG to make the word "baltimore" more readable after plotting. This should make it look nice, for example, on an EggBot.

UPDATE!

I forgot to resize the original for a sticky note pad (whoops!) and I was right that the EggBot version needed layers beginning with a number.

Updated files attached and pictures added!

Links
* Unicorn Inkscape extension: thingiverse.com/thing:5986
* Hershey Fonts in SVG: thingiverse.com/thing:6168

I created these logos so I could film one for a new "production title" logo for the Gothic Cathedral Play Set Time Lapse video I was putting together. And they really are fun to watch print.

These are also good simple examples of using Dan Newman's Inkscape hatch fill extension in combination with schmarty's Unicorn G-Code Extension for Inkscape.