Sunday 18 December 2011

hpgl2gcode - Gcode converter for PCBs

For a while I have wanted to print / mill pcbs on my Prusa. Not being sure if my machine, or my Dremel look-a-like would be up to to actually milling boards I decided to try the drawing options first.

This introduced a problem of it's own: the standard Reprap Host software does not seem to work with the Marlin firmware in my machine, and that has the conversion software for converting from Eagle's gerber format to something that can be used on the Reprap.

Looking at the available output formats in Eagle I found the HPGL driver, this is a language for driving XY plotters, and they are a bit like a Reprap :)

So I set about writing a quick utility that translates the HPGL output from the Eagle Cam Job into Gcode that can be understood by my Prusa.

Enter hpgl2gcode.

The source and instructions can be found here https://github.com/geoffd123/Hpgl2Gcode.

You create your layout in Eagle, then use the cam job suppiled in the source to output your top and bottom files, this gives you a xxx.top.hpgl and a .xxx.bot.hpgl file. You run these through hpgl2gcode and this creates your xxx.top.gcode and xxx.bot.gcode files. Use something like Pronterface to send these to your Reprap fitted with a pen holder and a suitable pen and it draws your board.

So far it is fairly experimental and as I have not printed a Pen Holder yet, I have not actually drawn a board, although I have sent the gcodes to the machine and it seems to be doing what I expect. Board printing will follow fairly soon!

6 comments:

  1. Wow excellent. I've seen several posts on your work. Let us know if you try it out. Ask this guy to print you one for your software :) http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:15014

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  2. Hi James, ermm err geoffd123 on Thingiverse is ermm me :) See later post for details of the Pen Holder. But thanks for taking the time to look for one.

    Cheers
    Geoff

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  3. This is just awesome. I created a plotter using two scanners and a CD drive and this program is what was missing to plotter my PCBs. I just ran in a simulation program that I made in Processing and it seems to work fine. Next days I will draw some PCBs. If it will work as expected, I can stop using Inkscape and other plugins to convert my Eagle schemas.
    Really thanks for this contribution.

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  4. Thanks Carlos. I have not done any work on this for a while as I am currently quite ill. But I plan to finish my hadron build and will need some more mods to this I think.

    ReplyDelete
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