3 - Robotic Drawing (Part 2)

Firstly, I made some changes to my design. Using the fill patterns we were given as a guideline, I figured out an offset fill that I liked a lot more for the main body of the fish. I also replaced the scribbles in the stars with the offset fill after hearing about the scribbles taking a long time (and I had some pretty dense scribbles in the original design). 

When it came to doing the actual print, I was already feeling super intimidated--I feel like I'm understanding grasshopper relatively well, but the actual CNC stuff is where my brain starts to slow down. I ran into a few issues that stopped me from even starting the print and decided to ask for help, and though it took a while to get here, I'm super happy with the final result and definitely feel like things have started to click for me. 

There were a few unexpected things with the print, such as the smaller stars being rounded and the hatches not aligning with the outlines. I'm not sure how I would fix the ladder, but I think the former would be fixed by increasing the X/Y resolution (this print was done with the X/Y resolution slider at 0.5). 

Another thing was that the machine would start to vibrate during some of the longer lines because of the pressure from the pen, which had a very subtle effect on the lines. I wonder if the same thing would have happened with something like a felt pen which wouldn't have required as much pressure.

That being said, I don't hate the way the outlines and hatches aren't perfect. The print almost has a fuzzy feeling to it, and I think that if it was perfect, it wouldn't be much different than just printing the design straight from a standard printer. One thing I would have changed is the Z clearance in the gcode--it was set at 6, but I think the process would have been a lot faster if it was set to 5 or even 4, because all of the tiny hatches made the print take a little longer than expected. 

The final print!! Thank you again Bryan for the help!! :)