Vector Drawing Software

This may be slightly outside the box of what Reprap is trying to accomplish, but i have a dream of being able to stick a pen mount into a mendel or similar device and having a vector drawing be put down including curves and fills.

The following is possible with this capability:
PCB Mask: Stick a Sharpie or other marker in and be able to draw your etch mask onto a copper board. By doing this you can now "print" directly on the board and remove the iron on process that laserjets require.

Custom "Hand made" greeting cards: People like the look of a marker or the authentic look of something that was hand made. Store bought is convenient, but its not as heart felt. By doing this even handwriting could potentially be simulated and cards could have peoples personal messages which would really feel special.

There are other ideas out there, but the software to convert vectors into CNC motion is missing. Any other opinions out there?

... all you need is a Vector-CAD-program and a converter between the vectorfile and GCode.

You can use inkscape what's exprting SVG and some other vector formats ...

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Viktor
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This may be slightly outside the box of what Reprap is trying to accomplish, but i have a dream of being able to stick a pen mount into a mendel or similar device and having a vector drawing be put down including curves and fills.

Actually, this is perfectly inline with RepRap, because the idea is that it is your machine, and you should have fun with it.

In this case it also is useful for circuitry and art. (Also, we're reinventing the 'plotter' - that is the technical term for machines which do this.)

Stick a Sharpie or other marker in and be able to draw your etch mask onto a copper board. By doing this you can now "print" directly on the board and remove the iron on process that laserjets require.
This has been discussed, but hasn't been done-and-documented.

You probably want to use a staedler red transparency maker to do etchant resist.

[www.makersgallery.com]
[reprap.org]
[builders.reprap.org]

Custom "Hand made" greeting cards: People like the look of a marker or the authentic look of something that was hand made. Store bought is convenient, but its not as heart felt. By doing this even handwriting could potentially be simulated and cards could have peoples personal messages which would really feel special.

[en.wikipedia.org] ?

This is ambitious. I am not saying that it would be impossible, but to try to convey delicacy of touch or personality of the writer, or all of the 'feel' will be tricky.

Also, think about the use case, i.e. what are you trying to achieve? This makes sense as a weekend project, or a multimonth robot calligraphy project as a personal artistic whim, but if you're doing, say, 1000 christmas cards, I'd suggest a good inkjet.

Also, I'd think about how the text may look a little mechanical, with every glyph
[en.wikipedia.org]
drawn the same, repeatedly, and mechanically.

There are other ideas out there, but the software to convert vectors into CNC motion is missing. Any other opinions out there?

This may be worth a skim:
[wiki.linuxcnc.org]
[wiki.linuxcnc.org]

And this is probably not relevant:
[reprap.org]

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-Sebastien, RepRap.org library gnome.

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Remember, you're all RepRap developers (once you've joined the super-secret developer mailing list), and the wiki, RepRap.org, [reprap.org] is for everyone and everything!

Thank you Sebastien. I hadn't found most of those links previously. It looks like some headway has been made already. The biggest hurdle i haven't really seen overcome is the Z lift when moving around between separate objects. Also this could be used in combination with XY motion to introduce pressure as when drawing by hand.

Im going to review the articles you linked and get back to asking more questions once im better informed.

The reason im going this route is that i stuck a Marker on my mendel, which has a broken Z axis at the moment, and made some cool plots. So then i thought how could this be expanded. I want to stick just about everything i can on the stage and see what i can make. Pen, extruder, drill, ...

Glad to help, CidVilas.

If you do end up doing something you find interesting, do take photos and document in the wiki if you like.

-Sebastien