[HN Gopher] Ink/Stitch
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Ink/Stitch
Author : Tomte
Score : 203 points
Date : 2022-02-25 09:36 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (inkstitch.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (inkstitch.org)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Ink /stitch: an Inkscape extension for machine embroidery
| design_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16074346 - Jan
| 2018 (20 comments)
| gilleain wrote:
| Nice! I see that Inkscape has support for 'G-code' (which I am
| just learning about ...)
|
| On a related topic, I'm looking into XY plotters to draw designs
| on paper - does anyone know the easiest or cheapest way to do
| that? Building it myself with a servo motor, an Arduino and a pen
| seems daunting.
| ungamed wrote:
| Buy a plotter. There are many second hand ones on the market.
| mkl wrote:
| I agree. Easier, cheaper, better results.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| 100% OT - but the wooden cable grips on the DIY Embroidery
| Machine tutorial really appeal to me!
|
| https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/44113605/47873925-...
| jstanley wrote:
| Seems strange to go to the trouble of making them out of wood
| when there's evidently a 3d printer available.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Maybe one of those bored days and turn out a load of 1/2/3/4
| cable grips to live in a box for the next project
| [deleted]
| bichonnages wrote:
| Wood is fun to work with! Very rewarding.
| Karliss wrote:
| The amount of "trouble" highly depends on the kind of tools
| and skills you have. For some people just going away from
| workshop to use the computer in office can be more hassle
| than taking a piece of wood and shaping it directly. It's the
| same as machinists choosing manual mill for simple one off
| parts even when CNC mill is available. 3d printing is good
| for more complicated parts. Some comments suggest cnc router
| but simple part like that with the right set of woodworking
| tools could be made in a couple of minutes freehanding it or
| maybe using paper template glued to a piece of wood. Also
| maybe the 3d printer was busy printing the other more complex
| parts which actually benefit from it. Different tools have
| different advantages for different parts.
| gearhart wrote:
| Looks like they could well have been CNC routed - if you turn
| them sideways they're a 2D design so it might be even easier
| than 3D printing them (and pretty!)
| jstanley wrote:
| I think you're right, but as someone who owns both a 3d
| printer and a CNC router, just preparing toolpaths for the
| router is more work than the entire process of 3d printing.
|
| Obviously they had a reason to make this choice, I just
| think I personally would have made a different one.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Better title:
|
| > Ink/Stitch: open-source machine embroidery design platform
| based on Inkscape
| snarfy wrote:
| My wife just got an embroidery machine. I've been meaning to look
| into this. As someone who has written their own g-code
| interpreters for their custom robots, what am I getting into?
| ta988 wrote:
| Lots of fun!
| jasonjayr wrote:
| It sounds simple at first blush, but there is a leap of
| creativity+skill from "this machine can run this pre-made
| design" to "digitizing arbitrary designs"
|
| There is a lot of nuance in the angle of the stitch, the type
| of thread, the patterns in satin fill stitching, underfill
| amount, etc. And then you need to watch out about the materials
| your stitching into, making sure things arn't stretched,
| distorted, or you use the right backing to hold it in place,
| etc.
|
| Dabble your toes in the plethora of professionally designed
| stitches, so you can see what they look like. The pre-made
| designs are just lists of x/y coordinates and stitch/cut
| commands. Keep in mind that this limits the amount you can size
| up or size down a design: most software won't add/remove
| stitches to scale it properly.
|
| Ink/Stitch can get around the resize problem by working with
| with vector/SVG as the source data, and rendering the stitch
| plan once you've sized things the way you want. It can also
| import most of the pre-made stitches (.pes, .vp3, etc) into
| Inkscape as a manual stitch plan, which is just a path with
| some flags in the xml, and then you can cut out parts of the
| stitch, or add additional parts.
| detritus wrote:
| Last time I checked (a long time ago, admittedly) most
| embroidery solutions were locked-in and opaque. It's a vastly
| different world to home-built CNCs running off GCode (sadly!).
| mkl wrote:
| They have instructions for making a DIY G-code embroidery
| machine: https://inkstitch.org/tutorials/embroidery-machine/
| luguenth wrote:
| Wow, this is such a nice application. In combination with this
| [1]. Could be a delightful Project to start with.
|
| [1] https://inkstitch.org/tutorials/embroidery-machine/
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Uh, Maybe I'm being over-sensitive - but is there any context
| for the six-sided star embroidery..
| gilleain wrote:
| I see what you mean, but sometimes a star is just a star :)
| seszett wrote:
| I suppose you're thinking about Jewish badges, but this one
| isn't a star of David (the points are too sharp to make
| equilateral triangles) and it's not yellow either, so I don't
| think there is any relation between them except for having
| six points.
| atrus wrote:
| I've used this a lot in the past for my embroidery projects, it's
| come so far from it's early days (and it was pretty good when it
| first came out). It's an incredible bit of software.
|
| As a side note, it's amazing how versatile Inkscape is. I
| literally use the program to: design cookie cutters for printing,
| make embroidery designs, create laser cut patterns, and CNC
| Router cutouts. Just an incredible program.
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| Is there a recommended way of using Inkscape to make it more
| user friendly?
|
| I hear so much love for Inkscape but every time I've tried to
| use it for laser cutting or 2d design I give up and go back to
| Illustrator. I feel like I'm battling Inkscape to do even the
| most basic things. I'm a very casual/occasional user (of either
| program).
|
| I'm happy using Gimp and Blender over Photoshop and Maya/Max
| for my home use cases but Inkscape is defeating me.
| soperj wrote:
| Honestly, I feel like it must be complete familiarity with
| Illustrator. I feel the same way about using Illustrator
| since I learned inkscape first.
| detritus wrote:
| Have you checked out Affinity Designer? I'm a near 20+ year
| user of Illustrator and I find Inkscape 'a bit' of a mess,
| but Affinity's offering, whilst paid for (but cheap), is much
| more honed. I can't wait 'til I can transition over to it
| 100% and unshackle myself from Adobe (just not quite there
| yet, sadly).
| stevenkkim wrote:
| +1 for Affinity Designer. I actually prefer it to
| Illustrator because it can do both vector and raster (they
| call it Designer and Pixel Personas). At $55 one-time price
| it's very reasonable.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| From what I understand, they had experienced Illustrator
| users in mind when designing the interface. Same with
| Photoshop and Affinity Photo. It seems to have paid off.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It's a bit like Macromedia Fireworks in that respect, if
| anybody else remembers that one
| blable2 wrote:
| Thank you for introducing me to this. I've been looking for
| this very function.
| pfranz wrote:
| So how ready is Ink/Stitch for an average consumer? My mom is
| recently retired and embroiders occasionally. I don't think she
| does anything more custom than a monogram. It was only a few
| years ago I pulled off old designs from floppy disks. I think
| her current equipment accepts USB but she leans on the cloud to
| get designs onto the machine. She's not geeky with computers,
| but is competent enough to use an iPad and used MS Office sweet
| when she was working.
|
| Does it sound like this is something worth introducing her to?
| atrus wrote:
| If she's not doing anything more complicated than monograms,
| I'd honestly stick with using the downloaded/custom designs.
| As it sounds like she's just using those she'd have to learn
| two things. The first being inkscape, which like _any_
| graphics program is a decent challenge to learn. Then on top
| of that, she 'd have to learn the embroidery specifics which
| is another challenge. Digitizing is just a whole level above
| using premade designs.
|
| It's more a replacement for Hatch/Embrilliance than for
| brother.com's library of designs.
| nkozyra wrote:
| It is phenomenal in features and flexibility, but it's not a
| stable application at all.
|
| I'd sacrifice some of the million things it can do if it
| wouldn't crash after closing a project on macos.
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| I think they target Linux as the primary OS, MacOS is second
| class citizen, perhaps for the best.
| MrJohz wrote:
| I have pretty much the same problems on Linux, so I don't
| think it's an OS issue. Inkscape is one of those tools that
| I use often, and am very grateful for, but I usually find
| the actual experience of using it very painful. Regular
| crashes being one of the big pain points at the moment.
| soperj wrote:
| What distro? I use Fedora, and I use it all the time and
| have never had it crash.
| MrJohz wrote:
| Both Ubuntu and Pop. In fairness, I think I've got it
| installed on Pop via Flatpak, which is sometimes part of
| the problem, but that's not the case on Ubuntu.
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