The black line is your speed and direction. The red circle is your top speed. The green circle is the dead zone. If the black line is inside the dead zone, the robot won’t move. If the black line is on the edge of the dead zone then it will move very slowly. In the picture above, it is moving at about half speed down and to the right.
So you want to prepare SVG drawings so they can be drawn on a Makelangelo. Nice! Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVG) are an great way of storing images as lines because they can be made bigger or smaller without losing detail. Since the Makelangelo “thinks” in lines, they are a natural fit together.
Inkscape: create your art
Inkscape is a free vector drawing program that loads a ton of file formats, including Adobe Illustrator. You can use it to turn a photo into line art or sketch something totally new. I used this picture of Darth Vader for this example. (Please support them to show your thanks.)
Darth Vector
Inkscape: Ungroup
Select everything and choose Object > Ungroup. In some vector images you might have groups of groups of groups, so keep going until the Inkscape status bar says “N objects selected of type Path in root.” Fortunately this Darth Vader image is pretty simple and only needs one Ungroup command.
Inkscape: File > Save As > Desktop Cutting Plotter (AutoCAD DXF R14) (*.dxf)
This is another format well respected in the machining communities. It is used by everything from Automatic quilting machines to CNC lasers to robot arms. Makelangelo software added support for DXF files in ~2014
Makelangelo: Convert > Open File
You should now see your picture on the screen. The picture will automatically fill the paper as much as it can.
Here you may discover a catch: SVG files can be made from many overlapping shapes, with junk hidden under the top-most layers. When you ungroup and save as DXF, the DXF file will have all the lines. The Makelangelo has no idea what lines are supposed to be on top, so you might need to clean up the vector file in Inkscape before you send it to the Makelangelo.
Makelangelo v7.2.9
Makelangelo: Start
And that’s it! Much easier than pre-2014 when DXF files needed a lot of massaging.
Black lines are the robot drawing limits. They only appear when the robot is connected. Blue are straight lines. Green are arcs. Pink are lines when the pen is up (and should not be drawn).
Edit: You can also move the preview while holding button 1 and scale while holding button 3.
This is Henry, customer #1. Henry bid in the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire Fundraiser last week, sniping the most hotly contested item in the auction. He came down to the Vancouver Hack Space and together we got our first test print going, as pictured below. Henry, you’ve been a joy to work with and you really helped me smooth out the rough spots in the instructions. Thank you!
The black line is your speed and direction. The red circle is your top speed. The green circle is the dead zone. If the black line is inside the dead zone, the robot won’t move. If the black line is on the edge of the dead zone then it will move very slowly. In the picture above, it is moving at about half speed down and to the right.
