MS Word to GCode driver?

Does anyone know of a way to export from MS Word to GCode as a single layer of text? Ideally this would be as seamless as possible, meaning choose font, type test then hit print.

I know there is a MS generic printer driver that can send just the text over USB, but that would require adding a layer to the Arduino code to generate the GCode. That's something I expect would be a bit complicated.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Glenn

Are you trying to manually create custom gcode files? Or wanting it to generate gcode that would print the text in the document?

If you are just trying to make gcode, use a simple text editor like notepad or notepad++. You could also save from MS Word as an ascii file.

To print the text, check out OpenSCAD.

Thanks for the reply.

I am looking to print directly from Word. Although I would take something else if it was easy enough to change the text and batch up a bunch of print jobs.

What exactly are you trying to print from Word? A 3D version of the document you are editing? I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish.

Just sending the text over USB is no use... you lose all the font and layout information.

I'd guess that you would need to write a printer driver for Windows. If you didn't want it to be solid (as opposed to say 20% infill), you would be writing a fair chunk of a slicer as well.

Probably easier would be to take a screenshot of the Word document, then print that... there's numerous ways to convert an image (JPG, PNG) to STL to Gcode. Or look for a Windows printer driver that stores the output as JPG/PNG/SVG? Or maybe you could do a PostScript to Gcode converter?

... I'm regularly converting fonts and graphics with Corel X6 to HPGL and import them it in my modified Printrun/Pronterface with a self written HPGL_to_G-code-parser.

To make this with Word you'll have to define your way to generate a "vector drawing" from your document and then the toolchain to convert it into G-code ...

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Viktor
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Basically, I'm looking to create a plotter for text and would like printing to be simple.

The comment about sending text over USB was just another possible solution to the problem. It gets the information to the Arduino which will then have to use a font and translate everything to GCode. I have found CNC router software that will do the trick, but the user interface is clunky at best when the text needs to be changed.

Thanks for all the input.