Yup, or build her a 3D printer, it's _literally easier_. After this entire series I'm still getting comments from people who can't seem to get it to work at all :/
why couldnt you set this up so that windows see's the machine as another printer? maybe a dumb question? but at least you could print directly from office applications. but, a *very* good video. also, you are right in that most videos dont show the programming part. most excellent series.
Thanks! Your question isn't stupid at all from an outside perspective I guess - thing is, while this machine just applies ink to a piece of paper like any printer, it's effectively a full blown 3D axis milling machine capable of machining aluminium as far as the control software is concerned. Of course it can't, but the motion control system treats it the same way, so it does perimeters first, then the infill. Actual office printers split the image to be printed into thousands of dots like pixels on a screen and print them one row after another, much like scan lines on a CRT screen used to recreate the image. They can't draw a continuous perimeter, it's just a bunch of dots. To make a plotter like this work like any printer, someone (not me!) would essentially have to write an entirely new firmware capable of splitting many different image formats up into dots that could be hammered down with the print head moving from one side of the paper to the other, while also converting that into usable signals for the stepper motors. The controller in the plotter itself would also have to be much more powerful to do all the extra processing, so for pen plotters that apparently mostly exist as an educational project since nobody actually needs them, it's easier to just run them on a slightly modified version of an existing control software normally used for CNC routers and stuff. I hope this helps :)
Another Question- I have an arduino uno and a few busted up printers - one of which we took a sledge hammer to 😂 but could we use the parts from that to build a plotter? Also I want it way faster! 😊🎉
@jamesbrady9105 depends on what type of printer they are if they have any useful components inside... A faster plotter is definitely a good idea if you don't want to get bored of it super quickly (ask me how I know). If you can get 4 smooth rods from those printers it'll be a good start for the linear rails - stepper motors inside printers are only useful if they are the rectangular type or otherwise do 200 steps per revolution with a step angle of 1.8° degree. It usually says so on the label. However, if you have no prior experience with CNCs I strongly recommend you get your feet wet by building a 3D printer first, as they are a walk in the park to get working compared to these plotters (and you can then use the 3D printer to build the plotter!) Genuinely - even though they add a whole other dimension, 3D printing is almost as easy to pick up as paper printing. So much better than these plotters because the software matured a lot over the past few years. I got into it not even a year ago and I am HOOKED! (as you can tell 😁)
By the way you can now support this channel on Patreon if you want to help keep high density educational content like this coming! www.patreon.com/user?u=81848920 Over there you get access to new videos at least 24 hours early, as well as sneak peeks behind the scenes and all the files (CAD, code, gerber, engineering drawings...) of my projects!
Does anyone knows..... How this transformation of 3-AXIS cnc grbl cnc into 2 axis plus 1 servo axis cnc plotter, are made or works because grbl is made to controll stepper motor of x y and Z axis but in plotter z axises works with servo's up - down decreat moment not with z stepper axis with linear moment and motions in 3d?
@@ChronicMechatronic I thought you were kidding... Then I took the transcript of your post, pasted it in a blank google docs, used tools-word count... tada: 7781 words! You know what? I tried to use my favorite text editor kate but it doesn't have that tool... Thank you for the tip Ben!
@@joetkeshub How do you extract the script from a video?? Automatic captions? Also fun fact, usually I write my video scripts in the notes app and this particular video was the first time I ran into the word limit - twice! It took three seperate notes for the entire script, I think thats more words overall than I managed on the book I tried to write 😂
@@ChronicMechatronic Hi Ben! You simply use youtube "show transcript" (... more) and voilà! But I have no clue how that could be done before uploading your stuff...😢 You likely know that for some dissertation you can be asked to limit the number of words - for timing purpose I suppose - but it's been a while that I had to do it. Amusing last phrase indeed.😆Have a good day Ben
Thank you so much for this. I would never have figured out that error on the dir_outbits line in a million years. You may have saved my university project. So glad I found this channel. You earned a sub
This is an amazing build! Even using just string, wood and small stepper motors as build materials, it produces a high quality drawing. Great stuff. I'm working on a 3d-printer-like device myself, so this material is super helpful. Subscribed.
Hey CM. I followed your instructions to a T. Unfortunately for me, I cannot for the life of me get the servo to move using M03 S40 and /or M05.. In UGS, servo value remains 0 regardless of where the pen should be up or down.. any thoughts?
I did not know there was a GRBL for those uni-polar motors. I used the same motor but modified them to be bi-polar, but still have to use MIGRBL since the z axis is a servo not a stepper.
Save broder very top of your project and I'm trying to build one with the same engines you used in yours. I'm from Brazil and I'm having trouble activating the z axis, then searching on youtube I found your videos from this link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-f6xCfzfiD6Q.html and I saw that you modified the scket and then I followed your steps to the letter and when I'm going to upload the error, could you send me your modified via mail?
Thank you for making these videos. So many other tutorials are just lacking depth of explanation. I'm planning on making a large plotter to draw a mural on a wall in my garden.
Hi Ben! GREAT JOB! The best video you've had posted. Pretty instructive. Awesomely entertaining. Your natural personality i.e. enthusiasm and self-deprecation makes this post really really interesting. Thank you Ben and Happy new year to you and your beloved. I've been watching this video more than 3 times. You definitely deserve more audience. The software hacking part is a must and you did a great job too with a bullet-proof pedagogy.
I ALWAYS enjoy watching you learn things and make what you make out of really accessible things (like steppers from old CD drives, wood, etc. AMAZING! Keep it up, and if you need some breaks for "sanity", take them!
Thank you :)) It's easy to get lost in video metrics, but comments like this one remind me that, at least for a small percentage, there is still a deeper purpose and value in what I do
sir, I want to use Relay instead of servo motor, I want to know how to control the relay using pin 11, what can I do?, there is internal error on inkscape even reinstalling it, Please Help
So i used the information you provided in this video, and applied it to my own DIY build, and i have all axis fuctioning, and homing correctly, but i can not, for the life of me get anything to draw. I have a test file, and when i click play, the axis drive themselves further into the the homing corner containing the endstops. I then invert $3, click play, and the x axis doesnt move while the y axis moves until it crashes into the other end of the machine. Also $3 changes my homing direction. Can someone please help???
Sounds like you got motor directions and homing directions reversed. I don't remember if the stepper direction invert mask on this GRBL ultimately worked or not, but if it doesn't, swap the motor connections around to physically reverse the motors and then invert homing direction. The X-axis should move to the right when you press the X+ button and Y should move the pen to the back of the paper (the paper towards you if bedslinger and standing in front of it) The placement of the limit switches also matters, GRBL automatically makes the axis positive of the coordinate system face away from the endstops, so ideally the homing corner is the front left corner of the paper. Otherwise the drawing will be inverted like on mine. I know, it's hella confusing, a full 3 axis CNC is literally easier to set up than these pen plotters.
Do you have the corrected code? Please send me it... The code of the github is changed... My cnc isn't working when I uploded that... Please send me your code...
Broh don't know how to thankyou. i've been working to make my plotter in working condition but sometimes stepper don't work and sometime servo. But remove that two slashes made my plotter work. Although length define by software and printer is not same when it sketches.
@@ChronicMechatronic You either connect limit switches to Vcc and the Arduino pin or you connect them to ground and the Arduino pin (that's the usual config) depending on your SW. Also you'll have to choose between NC or NO depending again on your software. In any case, you'll have to put some volts in that Arduino if you want it alive, so better connect that red wire to Vcc
@@twolaneblacktop5903 now you legit had me checking the schematic - the Arduino doesn't need to be connected to Vcc, it gets it's power from USB, which is then taken from the 5v pin and applied to the pull-up resistors. The limit switches are connected to ground and the Arduino pin, it's just that the pin gets pulled high so the Arduino can read a signal when they're pressed. I guess I should've specified them as NO switches and used a different shade of red for the Arduino 5V to differentiate it from the external 5V circuit...
@@ChronicMechatronic No USB connected in your diagram. I uploaded the firmware following your instructions (great job BTW) on an Arduino UNO, and PINs 9 and 10 both output 5 V, so limit switches (each with its capacitor 200 nF and its resistor 100 Ohms) have been connected (normally open) to ground and to the arduino PIN. I'm feeding 5V to the Arduino 5V pin through a common rail that also feeds the servo and the steppers. Everything works fine.
Thanks a bunch bro… I think its an only video on internet in which every single problem is addressed. I got solution for all the problems and flaws which were there in the servo programming and grbl as well. Again thanks…. Being a mechatronics lover i really enjoy watching your videos, keep it up. And ya.. a big thumbs up for your perfection👍🏻 ❤ from INDIA
Thank you so much for this video. It has been a great help to me for my school project. Although, I was wondering if limit switches are required. If not, would I just have to adjust other axis settings in grbl for the plotter to know how far it can go? Any advice would be appreciated.
You can totally go without limit switches, as far as I know GRBL simply applies the position it was powered up in as 0,0 and counts from there for the soft limits. If you just want to get it working you can even run it without soft limits altogether as long as you're careful not to send any axis outside its range (which is easier said than done)
Very nice and informational video, thanks! I made a project similar to this one a couple of years ago, using these same steppers, but I modified them to be bipolar instead of unipolar, it is quite a simple hack involving cutting a line and desoldering a cable, very easy, there are a few tutorials here in RU-vid showin how to do this. That way you can use a much more standard GRBL (you still need the servo hack, obviously) and can use any regular bipolar stepper driver, like the popular A4988. You learn a lot about CNC with one of this projects, but this steppers have so much backlash that are only usable as a proof-of-concept, it is much more convenient to spend a little money on a couple of NEMA-17 steppers, even the cheapest ones are much better than this 28BYJ. Thanks a lot for sharing this with us!
Thanks for commenting! Yeah I've seen the unipolar to bipolar hack, that's what inspired my 3D printer... I agree the 28BYJ are junk and the NEMAs are a lot better, but now I set my mind to making NEMA-like precision CNCs using the low-ish step count round unipolar steppers that can be salvaged from old printers and scanners for free 😁 Likewise those round steppers can be bought for half the price of the NEMAs, so that should make CNC in general a lot more accessible!
I do, because as long the limit switch is on the wrong side GRBL will have the coordinate system inverted. If you then switch motor directions it'll just go the wrong way and crash
@@newman2022 your drawing needs to have "Fill" color turned on, and "Shading threshold" in GcodePlot set to 1. I believe you can draw full color graphics in B&W by setting the shading threshold to something low like 0.1 and it'll convert the colors into different shades of hatching based on their lightness. In that case "Lightest shading spacing" and "Darkest shading spacing" will set the boundaries.
Hello, how can I speed up rotation of my stepper motors? Thank you very much. I was trying to make pen plotter for many years and when I watched your series of making one I succed! Problem was in "//", I don't want to say it, they killed me! 😂😁😀
Yeah those slashes are pretty cruel 😂 If you're using the 28BYJ-48 steppers, they can only go so fast because of the gearing. On my machine with a 10mm pulley the maximum feed rate is 350mm/min...
@@ChronicMechatronic Thanks, I made CNC shield using uln2003 ICc and I will make video how I made CNC. When I make it I will send it to you so you can see it and give me some tips. I am 14 yrs Old. Thank you for reply!
That would be fun for the mechanical engineering part, but my programming skills are in no state for me to even think about tackling computer vision 😬🤣
I too had some struggles with the GRBL firmware. In my case 1.1h. Both 0.9 and 1.1 are basically discontinued as they don't accept pull requests and haven't had any new commits for several years. I moved on to µCNC and I want to recommend testing it. I would love to see an episode featuring it. :)
Thanks for the suggestion, I'm always glad if people mention alternative firmware solutions cuz I don't know what's out there and search engines only bring up the most popular... I still have a few CNC projects coming up that I can try it on, though for the time being I don't plan on making any videos specifically about software - since I don't know what I'm doing software tutorials are a lot harder to make to begin with, plus I get people whining in the comments if it doesn't work for them :')
Thanks for the suggestion, I'm always glad if people mention alternative firmware solutions cuz I don't know what's out there and search engines only bring up the most popular... I still have a few CNC projects coming up that I can try it on, though for the time being I don't plan on making any videos specifically about software - since I don't know what I'm doing software tutorials are a lot harder to make to begin with, plus I get people whining in the comments if it doesn't work for them :')
@@ChronicMechatronic lol, I don't know what I'm doing either. That's why I am doing it. Learning by doing.. I mean wrecking things, is very effective 😄
Somehow RU-vid labeled your response as "likely spam" 🤷♂️... Yes, breaking stuff is very educational, the remorse really sticks (at least for me it's the remorse of having broken something I could've otherwise still used 😂 Though the last time I blew up a component I didn't learn anything, It was an Arduino I plugged 12V into via the barrel jack and the voltage regulator immediately released magic smoke - I'm pretty sure everything was wired correctly and the max input voltage of the AMS1117 is 15V, soooo...
As I had recommended trying µCNC I just wanted to revert and give a heads up it could have some problems. I had three different behaviors with three different gcode senders using the firmware. So I went back to official 1.1h. The guy behind µCNC is doing awesome work trying to answer questions in the forums. But in my case, I just didn't have time adressing the cause of the problem.
Oui je sais! La série de plotter est facilement la plus populaire! Dommage qu'on est arrivé a la dernière vidéo plotter... C'est pourquoi mon prochain projet sera une découpeuse laser - très similaire à un plotter et je peux utiliser les mêmes mots clés pour la SEO 🙄🙄 donc plus de vues 😁
(FR) Salut Ben! 46 minutes de vrai bonheur! On y apprend beaucoup; on est accaparés par ta vivacité et ton humour décapant - tu as un talent de comédien qui s'ignore. Une recherche à travers les folders t'aurait vite situé le "bug" de commentaire, à partir du moment où le compilateur a affiché le coupable... C'est un de mes reflexes de développeur... Mais félicitations! Tu as fait un vrai travail de détective et un énorme travail de cohérence pour finalement forcer ce très beau plotter à accoucher de son premier bébé. On imagine facilement tout le travail que ce post a nécessité et on est heureux de ne pas être frustrés par des problèmes que tu n'aurais pas su résoudre. Pour moi, ce post est LE MEILLEUR de ce que tu as mis sur youtube: complet, instructif et aussi long comme un thriller. Bonne année à toi Ben et à tes proches! Tu as placé ta propre barre très haut. Merci beaucoup l'ami.
Salut Philibert! Merci beaucoup :) Merveilleuse année 2023 à toi et ton oncle (et le reste de ta famille)!! Oui, il aurait certainement eu des solutions plus simples pour trouver le bug, il y a même un commentaire sur ma toute première vidéo CNC qui mentionne la solution... Tu as raison, surpasser cette video prendra longtemps, surtout parce-que désormais pour quelque temps je vais m'en tenir à des vidéos médiocres et plus courtes comme la majorité sur la platforme :((( En revanche ça mène à une plus grande quantité de vidéos :)
@@joetkeshub hmm, je sais pas, etant le perfectionniste que je suis je dois également faire des efforts pour réduire les efforts que je mets dans les vidéos 🤔 - même si c'est un différent genre d'efforts... De toute façon ma vidéo de janvier est déja finie à moitié 😅
@@ChronicMechatronic des efforts pour réduire les efforts... voilà qui est bien ésotérique😎🧐c'est un peu comme certains pratiquants de yoga qui font crier le mental pour le faire taire... Tout un programme, dirait le célébrissime général de Gaulle. J'aime. Le perfectionnisme est un maître sans concessions, mais vu les résultats, pourquoi ne pas s'y plier surtout si c'est un naturel. Je me demande qui des deux faces de ton projet de plotter, est la plus accomplie et la plus sobre. J'hésite, le plotter est un bijou de manufacture, bien brossé, très Nippon pour le décrire au plus près. Et de l'autre côté, le software hacké est tout autant respectable. Bien, en attendant ton prochain post, ménage ton sommeil ;) Je sais par expérience que quand on est sur un projet, ça traverse même les rêves, on y pense en dormant. Salut Ben, bonne première semaine 2023, qu'elle te soit heureuse, mon oncle me charge de te le dire.
While I appreciate the video for instructing new people getting in to CNC:s, I don't appreciate your attitude to the work put in to all of the softwares you are using. How much did you pay for them or how did you help the projects in other ways to improve? At least show them some respect... The monetary compensation that I have got for the code I have written on UGS could probably be counted as pennies per hour. For instance, on those pennies I rather focus creating functionality that matters than a fancy installation program for UGS - just saying. You seem to have the Y-axis inverted, think of it as the movement of the pen. The movement it is making now is the same as moving the paper: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-f6xCfzfiD6Q.html
You're absolutely right, I'm sorry. I wanted to document from a beginner's perspective how much pain was involved before achieving those satisfying CNC time-lapses we get shown everywhere, and I guess I didn't stop to think about how I was portraying the work of those who made the software. Yeah the Y-axis was flipped cause my limit switch was seemingly on the wrong side. Fixed that in the meantime...
I have worked in many open source project and i don't aspect anyone to say wow it is awesome if someone tells something is wrong i try to be better at my work and apricate the feed back. I don't think you said anything wrong this simple mistake in code might have frustrated many new people and make them stop their work on there project.
@@isntitawesome2104 thanks I appreciate that! Though it is a valid point, one shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. I personally am perfectly happy with UGS and GRBL once everything works and I got used to it. Which doesn't change anything about the user experience being frustrating for a beginner. Then again, you guys should have heard my yelling and cursing when I first started editing in DaVinci Resolve!!
CNC milling machines generally work by moving the bed (or paper ). Since gcode was originally developed for that purpose, some of the conventions stick around.
@@jeradw7420 the coordinate should be the tool position relative to the material (or machine bed). It doesn't matter how the machine is constructed, moving bed or moving gantry. At this moment in the video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-f6xCfzfiD6Q.html when he pressed the jog buttons for the Y-axis the relative movement of the tool/pen to the material is inverted. So that is why he needed to mirror the model on the Y-axis to get the correct result. Simply invert the direction of the Y-axis and the problem will be solved.
hi great vide thank you, using inkscape 1.2 i have a problem on a mac os13 i cant save the gcode file, i get the error Traceback (most recent call last): File "/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/share/inkscape/extensions/gcodeplot.py", line 9, in import svgpath.parser as parser File "/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/share/inkscape/extensions/svgpath/__init__.py", line 1, in from .path import Path, Line, Arc, CubicBezier, QuadraticBezier File "/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/share/inkscape/extensions/svgpath/path.py", line 3, in from collections import MutableSequence ImportError: cannot import name 'MutableSequence' from 'collections' (/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/collections/__init__.py)
