https://github.com/stypox/text-to-gcode

Compiles ASCII text into 2D gcode that can be printed by a plotter
https://github.com/stypox/text-to-gcode

gcode gcode-generation text-to-gcode

Last synced: 10 months ago
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Compiles ASCII text into 2D gcode that can be printed by a plotter

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/stypox/text-to-gcode
• Owner: Stypox
• Created: 2019-01-31T15:07:57.000Z (almost 7 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2021-06-19T17:50:28.000Z (over 4 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2025-02-08T20:47:33.444Z (12 months ago)
• Topics: gcode, gcode-generation, text-to-gcode
• Language: nesC
• Homepage:
• Size: 452 KB
• Stars: 28
• Watchers: 3
• Forks: 8
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md

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README

          
# Text to G-code compiler

This repository contains a Python 3 script that takes a **text file as input** and generates a **2D G-code file as output**. The alphabet contained in the `ascii_gcode` subfolder supports **all ASCII characters** and is used by default, producing letters made up of just **single lines**, like you can see in the image below. The parameters that you can tune are the directory in which to look for the G-code alphabet, the maximum length of a line, the distance between two subsequent lines and the empty space between characters. You can then **use the produced G-code in a 2D plotter**, you may find this other project of mine useful: [plotter](https://github.com/Stypox/plotter).

![An example with Lorem Ipsum and all supported characters](./example.png)

Obtained with http://jherrm.com/gcode-viewer/

## Usage

You can run the script normally with [Python 3](https://www.python.org/downloads/):

```

python3 text_to_gcode.py ARGUMENTS...

```

This is the help screen with all valid arguments (obtainable with `python3 text_to_gcode.py --help`):

```

usage: text_to_gcode.py [-h] [-i FILE] -o FILE [-g DIR] -l LINE_LENGTH [-s LINE_SPACING] [-p PADDING]

Compiles text into 2D gcode for plotters

optional arguments:

  -h, --help            show this help message and exit

  -i FILE, --input FILE

                        File to read characters from

  -o FILE, --output FILE

                        File in which to save the gcode result

  -g DIR, --gcode-directory DIR

                        Directory containing the gcode information for all used characters

  -l LINE_LENGTH, --line-length LINE_LENGTH

                        Maximum length of a line

  -s LINE_SPACING, --line-spacing LINE_SPACING

                        Distance between two subsequent lines

  -p PADDING, --padding PADDING

                        Empty space between characters

```

The required parameters are the input, the output and the line length (in order to tune this last parameter, note that the average width of a character is ~4.5).

An example of command is:

```sh

python3 --input input.txt --output output.nc --line-length 300 --line-spacing 10 --padding 3

```