Using Blender to Create Line Drawings of STLs for a Pen Plotter

Winged Victory of Samothrace


I have a workflow to create 2D art to plot but I was curious to see if I could create plots of 3D scenes.  I found several ways that this could be done but the one that I found to be the most aesthetically pleasing is using Blender.  An STL can be created or it can be downloaded to create a plot.  I picked one of the Lewis Chessman and Nike of Samothrace models to plot.

I have only a rudimentary understanding of Blender, but it's enough to make some interesting plots.
I import an STL, move the STL to be where the starting cube is located (and then delete the cube), scale the STL down, adjust the camera to the angle I like, adjust the light to be more 'dramatic' and then I use Freestyle with Freestyle SVG exporter.  Under View Layer Properties->Freestyle Line Set, I have the following Edge Type choices selected.



I then opened up the svg exported file with Inkscape, select all and Simplify, then save the file.
I then used vpype to adjust scale, line merge and line sort:
vpype  read wingedvic2.svg   layout --fit-to-margins 2cm a4 write output.svg
vpype read output.svg linemerge --tolerance 0.2mm write output2.svg
vpype read output2.svg linesort write output3.svg

I then used juicy-gcode to generate gcode, I adjusted the flavor file to have longer G4 dwell times on the tool on and tool off.

gcode

{

   begin = "M280P0S40;G90;G21;G28 X Y;G1 F1800;M201 X500 Y500 Z500 E500;M204 P500.00 R500.00 T500.00;M205 S0.00 T0.00 B20000 X1.00 Y1.00 Z0.40 E.500"

   end = "G4 P50; M280P0S40;G1 X0 Y0"

   toolon =  "G4 P1;M280P0S29;G4 P1;M280P0S28;G4 P1;M280P0S27;G4 P1;M280P0S26;G4 P1;M280P0S25;G4 P1;M280P0S24;G4 P1;M280P0S20;G4 P100"

   tooloff = "G4 P1;M280P0S40;G4 P100"

}



I then plotted the files and took some pictures of the plots with my phone.

Lewis Chessman Warder


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