During our Back to School Sale, use checkout coupon code SCHOOL to save 10% at the Evil Mad Scientist shop.
Everything is included in the sale, from LEDs and soldering kits to AxiDraw and accessories.
Sale runs through Saturday, August 31.
All posts by Windell Oskay
MOnSter in a box
For the past couple of years we have been working towards a public launch of the MOnSter 6502, our working transistor-scale replica of the famous MOS 6502 microprocessor.
One of the biggest pieces of the puzzle has been how to present it in such a way that shows off its beauty but also lets you see it in action. Here – finally – is the result of that effort: An elegant shadowbox frame with hidden electronics and integrated buttons.
If you’d like to see the MOnSter and its new prototype enclosure, this weekend is the perfect opportunity: we are exhibiting it at the 2019 Vintage Computer Festival West, August 3-4 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Where to go from here? If everything goes well, we’ll be launching the MOnSter this fall. Stay tuned!
Stroke fonts from Quantum Enterprises
One of the features in our new Hershey Text v 3.0 software is the ability to extend it with new fonts.
One company, Quantum Enterprises, is already selling high quality stroke fonts that are compatible with the new Hershey Text, and ideal for use with the AxiDraw.
Their fonts are available in matched pairs: A TrueType (outline) font and a single-stroke SVG stroke font. The TrueType font works as a regular computer font, which you can use to lay out and edit text on your page. Hershey Text then performs automatic font substitution replacing the text in place with the matching stroke font.
Here is a sample of what one of their regular (TrueType) handwriting-like fonts looks like, as laid out on the page within Inkscape:
And, here is how that same text looks once rendered with Hershey Text into its single-stroke SVG font version:
The single-stroke text comprises a set of paths ideally suited to be traced with a pen. And finally, here is how that stroke text looks as plotted with the AxiDraw:
These new stroke font pairs, as well as custom fonts, are available to purchase directly from Quantum Enterprises.
An especially neat feature of these fonts is that they can work with the Quantum Enterprises Scriptalizer character substitution software — now available directly integrated within a special version the AxiDraw software. This software performs automatic substitution between different letter forms (glyphs) for the same character, making plotted text look more like handwriting.
The AxiDraw CLI and Python API
Following the release of our new AxiDraw software this week, we are pleased to announce the release of two additional software components that greatly extend the capability of the machine.
The AxiDraw software is now available in two alternate versions that may be helpful for developers or for anyone who would like to control the machine programmatically rather than through Inkscape: A stand-alone command-line interface (CLI) tool, as well as a full-featured Python library.
The AxiDraw CLI
The first new tool is the AxiDraw CLI, a command-line API to drive the AxiDraw outside of Inkscape. Like the Inkscape-based software, its primary function is to plot SVG files. However, it is a stand-alone utility that can be driven from within shell scripts and other environments that make use of shell commands.
Once installed, plotting a file can be as simple as executing the following command:
axicli filename.svgThere are, of course, a breadth of different modes and configuration parameters available. We have written detailed descriptions of each of these options in our comprehensive API documentation. The CLI also supports the use of configuration files to quickly switch between different sets of parameters.
Since most common scripting and programming environments allow one to call shell commands like this, that allows the AxiDraw to be used directly within a wide variety of frameworks.
The Python API
The second new tool is the AxiDraw Python API. The AxiDraw CLI is written within Python, and we have both exposed and expanded upon that nucleus to create a flexible and powerful Python module, complete with its own comprehensive documentation.
Just like the CLI, the Python API can plot SVG documents; it can both read SVG files and accept strings containing SVG data.
It also has features that are not available within Inkscape or the CLI: It supports direct interactive XY control. You can use absolute or relative moveto/lineto type commands to control the AxiDraw from within your own programs. This is particularly useful for a wide variety of potential AxiDraw applications that are not writing or drawing, but otherwise making use of the AxiDraw as a low-cost motion control platform.
Hershey Text v 3.0
Some years ago we wrote a neat little Inkscape extension called Hershey Text. Hershey text could take a little bit of text that you would type and render it into stroke fonts, also known as engraving fonts.
We are very pleased this week to release an all-new version of Hershey Text, written from scratch, and far more useful, capable, and extensible. We have a comprehensive user guide for it as well.
Hershey Text v 3.0 will be bundled into future versions of Inkscape, but it’s also included with the new AxiDraw software and available on its own for download today.
New AxiDraw Software v 2.5
We’re pleased to announce the release of the latest version of the AxiDraw software, 2.5. which includes a number of frequently-requested features that we’ve been working on over the last year.
An expanded user guide
Perhaps foremost, we have updated and greatly expanded the PDF AxiDraw user guide, which covers how to use the AxiDraw, including every part of the software. In addition to sections that go over the new features, we have thoroughly revised the rest, including a larger and clearer section on getting started.
A new SVG optimization tool
In normal use, the AxiDraw software plots elements in the same order that they occur in the file. However, depending on how your file was generated, that may not be the most efficient way to do things. If the order of the elements in the file is poor enough, the plot time can actually be dominated not by writing and drawing time, but by pen-up movements (illustrated here in red) between objects.
We’ve written a new SVG ordering utility, that can sorting of objects in an SVG document, re-ordering them as needed to reduce pen-up travel. It’s also a layer-aware and group-aware sorting tool, that can process a full document and reorder elements on each layer of the document and either respect or break apart other groups in your document. This tool is available in two versions: An individual Inkscape extension as well as an integrated version that you can use automatically within the AxiDraw software.
Better support for using multiple machines
The new AxiDraw software supports assigning names to individual AxiDraw units over USB, which you can use as semi-permanent labels when printing to a particular machine. You can also now plot to a specific AxiDraw, or simultaneously plot the same document to a number of connected machines.
A new version of Hershey Text
This release includes an all-new version of Hershey Text, our software for creating stroke-based text within Inkscape. You can about the new features in our blog post announcing it.
And more!
Amongst other improvements in the new software are the following:
- Updated to use Inkscape 0.92
- Paths in the document are now clipped gracefully and precisely at the boundaries of both the artboard (drawing canvas) and machine travel.
- Supports more SVG object and layout types natively
- Faster plotting on paths with very high vertex density
- Online version check added
- Improves behavior of Hatch Fill extension
- Bug fixes galore
We recommend this new version to all AxiDraw users; you can download it for Mac, Windows, or Linux, following our guide here.
Evil Mad Scientist Valentines: 2019 Edition
Today we are releasing our newest set of “Download and Print” cards for Valentine’s day. This is our seventh year, and seventh set of cards. The 2013 set had six equation-heavy cards, the 2014 set was a set of six symbol-heavy cards, and the 2015 set included love, hearts, and arrows. The 2016 set featured Pluto’s cold heart, and the perfect card for your robotic expression of love. In 2017 we featured atomic orbitals, exponential growth, and an epsilon delta declaration of love. The 2018 set featured normal force, stable equilibriums, and something about RPN calculators.
This year’s set features geometry, division by zero, batteries, a nod to quantum chromodynamics, and two very bad puns. (Sorry not sorry.)
To the extent that it is important that romance is rational, this is an extremely romantic card.
A proton or neutron is made up of three quarks, but its mass turns out to be dominated by chromodynamic binding energy, not the mass of those quarks. Corollary: By weight, humans are almost entirely binding energy.
Unlike most Valentine’s cards, which neglect the vast majority of your potential paramour, this card will let them know that you appreciate more than a tiny fraction of them.
I tried to compute my love for you but my calculator gave me an error.
Like a LiPo battery charged at the proper rate so that it does not explode.
You had better be positive before you give this card to someone.
You can download the full set here, which includes all 42 designs from all seven years (PDF, 1.8 MB).
As usual, print them out on (or otherwise affix to) card stock, personalize, and [some steps omitted] enjoy the resulting lifelong romance.
Linkdump: November 2018
- Paper Pulp 3D Printer
- Jackie Speier on Surviving Jonestown
- Puzzle Montage Art by Tim Klein
- London Tube Cutaways
- Why your mental map of the world is (probably) wrong
- Rare microbes lead scientists to discover new branch on the tree of life
- OSH Park launched a snazzy new Flex PCB service
- The Lunar Swirl
- Siser EasyWeed, a laser-friendly, vinyl-cutter-friendly iron-on material. Neat.
- The fake rolex of canned tomatoes
- Tymkrs and the Art of Circuitry
- Retro tees at Radio Shack
- Screen printed Circuit Portraits
Linkdump: September 2018
- Dynamic liquefaction sinks ships.
- A Homemade Engraving Pantograph (YouTube).
- Metal casting at home with lost PLA and green sand.
- How to pick up a cat like a pro (YouTube, via Boing Boing).
- Coffee Candy, Ranked.
- Mug-O-Matic: A different geometry of mug plotter.
- Mathematical patterns that eventually fail.
- Murdered man’s body found after tree grew from seed in his stomach.
- DIY Deep Sea Dropcam.
- A curious theory about the first recipe involving tomatoes.
- 3D print your own Floppy disk construction kit.
- Cuisine Ingredients: Statistical analysis of ingredients
- A CNC flat coil winder
- Is it possible to make a laser out of wood?
- Understanding user support systems in open source.
- Telescope Building with John Dobson — How to build a Dobsonian telescope (YouTube)
The AxiDraw SE/A3
We’re very pleased to introduce a new member of the AxiDraw family: the special edition AxiDraw SE/A3. This new model joins our existing models including the AxiDraw V3 and AxiDraw V3/A3.
Like the AxiDraw V3/A3, the AxiDraw SE/A3 has an XY travel suitable for use paper up to 11×17″/A3 size. However, in place of the central extrusion that makes up the body of that machine, the AxiDraw SE/A3 has a central beam that is CNC machined from a solid billet of 6061-T6 aluminum, and then anodized to a sleek black finish.
This heavy, rigid structure — it’s a solid block of metal! — provides dramatically better straightness and stiffness, even compared to the already-stiff AxiDraw V3/A3. This design adds mass exactly where you want it: to the non-moving base that forms the X-axis of the machine. In order to keep the weight light where it matters, the moving Y-axis of the AxiDraw SE/A3 uses the same stiff and light custom aluminum extrusion that we use on the AxiDraw V3/A3.
We made a video showing off the SE/A3, and how it’s made:
The AxiDraw SE/A3 is available to order now at the Evil Mad Scientist shop.
