x y plotter?

[cyanidemonkey]

me & a friend are looking at perhaps making a small home made mild steel cutter (about 600mm X 600mm footprint). just an idea at this stage, thought i'd ask if the idea is workable.

the rough plan is to use 2 scanners stepper motors, one for x, one for y, with a cutter at the center where the bars cross. my mate is the mechanical person, i have another mate who could proberly make us a digital to analogue interface, which leaves me to provide a software to run it.

i am wondering if it would be possible to write software in autoit to import a black & white image (.gif, or .bmp) and perhaps do a pixel search to plot the x/y data and then use something like the com port udf or usb udf to transmit the data to the stepper motors?

would this be possible? or are there better ways to achieve the same result?

[Richard Robertson]

To answer your question we would need to see the way that the hardware connects to the computer. We can't just say "yes that will work" if we don't know what to check.

[Kip]

It maybe can be done, if you give us more information.

[martin]

me & a friend are looking at perhaps making a small home made mild steel cutter (about 600mm X 600mm footprint). just an idea at this stage, thought i'd ask if the idea is workable.

the rough plan is to use 2 scanners stepper motors, one for x, one for y, with a cutter at the center where the bars cross. my mate is the mechanical person, i have another mate who could proberly make us a digital to analogue interface, which leaves me to provide a software to run it.

i am wondering if it would be possible to write software in autoit to import a black & white image (.gif, or .bmp) and perhaps do a pixel search to plot the x/y data and then use something like the com port udf or usb udf to transmit the data to the stepper motors?

would this be possible? or are there better ways to achieve the same result?

If you mean you want to cut the mild steel then you need to decide how you are going to cut it. Maybe a plasma torch because you can get small ones very cheaply which will easily cut through 4 or 5 mm steel plate. This has the advantage that when you move around curves you don't need to worry about the rotation of the 'cutter'.

Laser would be nice if you could afford a few tens of thousand dollars!

I don't follow your description of a cutter at the centre where the bars cross. You need an XY plotter arangement I would think.

I recommend that you start by assuming that you will use dxf files and not gif or a bmp file unless you have a particular reason not to. A dxf file is universally used by CAD design programs and it is a text file which can be easily read to work out the curves and lines. The com port could be used to transmit data to stepper motors

I specialize in computer controlled glass cutting machines and in Novemeber I am installing a machine I built and wrote software for in Aukland!

[cyanidemonkey]

cheers for the feedback, food for thought.

can't really give more info, as it is just a basic idea & was fishing for how hard/easy it would be.

but yes, the idea was proberlly use a small hand plasma cutter, we were only looking at 1.5~2mm mild steel cutting.

i agree martin, a laser would be very nice , but if we had that kinda coin we would just get a PlasmaCAM or simular unit.

for now i think we'll make do with more simple jigs and manual cutting.