Eggbot Upgrades

I recently received the Ostrich Eggbot upgrade as a gift and have been enjoying printing on glass ball ornaments again this year.  The larger chassis allows for printing on larger spheroids and the spring loaded egg coupler has an improved grip over the older version.

I later purchased an engraving tool which replaces the pen, but have had difficulty getting good contrast on clear glass ornaments.  I'll continue trying slower speeds, increasing the number of passes, and try different materials for better results.  Results forthcoming!

Inkscape for CNC: Part 1

I was introduced to Inkscape when I first began using my Eggbot.  Inkscape is "an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format."  What's so important about this, you may ask?  Two reasons.  First, Inkscape creates vector graphics in a format many CNC (computer numerical control) devices like the Eggbot or laser cutters can interpret to cut, engrave, or draw your designs.  Secondly, because Inkscape is Open Source it's free and available for anyone to download and work with!

Unlike your typical paint and pencil graphics programs (think MS Paint), vector graphics programs can be somewhat challenging to use as they're not entirely intuitive.  Quite a few excellent tutorials can already be found on the Inkscape Tutorials Page. The tutorial I'll be presenting here is specifically geared towards creating or preparing graphics to be used with cnc devices.  As with any relatively complex program, it will take time before you can become proficient, but this tutorial should help with the first steps.

You can watch the first part below.

Eggbot Printing

After reading about the Eggbot at Evil Mad Science and seeing it in action at the East Bay Mini-Maker Faire I was hooked and ordered one.  I've had great success printing on eggs and ornaments.  The trickiest part of the whole process is developing a .svg vector art file that prints good results.  Because it uses an actual pen (a fine tip sharpie), printing must be done using lines instead of the usual dot matrix method.  That means filing in regions of solid color must be done using zig-zaging and/or multiple vectors.