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Author Topic: How can I make my pen lines smoother for silky smooth vector drawing?
ecc23
Newbie
Posts: 3
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Post How can I make my pen lines smoother for silky smooth vector drawing?
on: May 15, 2017, 20:31
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Arduino UNO
L293D motor shield
Latest firmware + controller
Motors - Nema 17 Stepper Motor 34mm 12V 0.4A
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Hello all, medium time lurker, first time poster.
First and foremost thanks to Sandy for the excellent instructable that let me to begin my own project and to the other posters on here of which I have found a wealth of useful info.

This question has probably been answer before under the guise of such words as: jerky, jumpy, shaky, wavy, etc. but I cannot find a direct answer to my question.

I 3D printed and modded a setup from thingyverse to optimise it, but I still have issues. My gondala is super close to the board, but the battery weight does shake a bit. So is it my physical setup? But then when drawing vectors, it seems to 'chop' the line up going tat-tat-tat-tat shaking all the while creating ugly authentic wobbliness!

Other thoughts I had: upgrading the motor shield? Perhaps using the adafruit v2 would mean the (stepping) pulsing to the steppers would make them run smoother?

Many thanks in advance for any help 🙂
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ecc23
Newbie
Posts: 3
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Post Re: How can I make my pen lines smoother for silky smooth vector drawing?
on: May 19, 2017, 18:37
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I can see I'm not getting any joy with this post, perhaps I'll posit it in a slightly different way; people using AFSM2, what are your vector lines like?

kongorilla
Pro
Posts: 362
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kongorilla
Post Re: How can I make my pen lines smoother for silky smooth vector drawing?
on: May 20, 2017, 16:33
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Have you tried changing the "polygonizer" setting from its default? I haven't done a polargraph drawing in ages, and have very little experience with the current software, but I seem to remember there was a new button at the bottom of controller window for that. IIRC, I had to change it from the default to get good vectors drawn.

sandy
Administrator
Posts: 1317
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sandy
Post Re: How can I make my pen lines smoother for silky smooth vector drawing?
on: May 20, 2017, 19:23
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Fiddling with polygonizer is worth a shot, the polygonizer length will make some difference, but increasing the "shortest vector" will do more - at the expense of losing a little detail - that you probably won't notice anyway.

If you are driving the machine via USB, then vector drawing can be interminable, because the protocol is slow - lots of stops and starts. If it's those stops and starts that's causing problems with bouncing pens, then there's not much you can do about it beyond slowing things down, reducing the acceleration.

The biggest problem with the adafruit shields is that there's no real tuning possible, and I guess it's fair to say that I don't know if there's a better way to match motors, drivers and power, beyond:

Motors should draw around 0.6A because L293D can handle that continuously.
Power supply should be able to supply 1.2A because two motors x 0.6A.

Microstepping is a possible option for you, and it does smooth movement, but I've never got on with it. It's weird and squealy and rubs me up the wrong way. You'd need to recompile the firmware to change it.

sn

ecc23
Newbie
Posts: 3
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Post Re: How can I make my pen lines smoother for silky smooth vector drawing?
on: July 18, 2017, 21:26
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Hey to both of you, thanks for your responses and sorry I have taken so long to get back to you.

I kind of had to accept the limitations of the system in the end. I can see the issue balancing it, I guess its a case of tuning the system - operating with high quality materials - like belts for example on a very high quality machine to get a better result. I have worked with microstepping with stepper motors before and got very satisfying results, got the motors running really smoothly but I am not a coder so I don't think I could take that project on 😉

Anyway, now I have made it I'm on the art train again and looking to do some work involving 'coding nature'.

All the best,
EC

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