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Abstract— Over the past 5 years, there has been a tremendous manoeuvred the machine. Since this was purely based on
rise in designing various prototypes for a 3D printer. While most human control, there was no actual guarantee of any form in
of them concentrate on accuracy and speed, the cost has always refinement of measurement. As years progressed, Numerical
been a concerning factor. In this paper, we present a novel cost Control(NC) based systems came into light. These were first
effective setup which could be used for both the X and Y axis invented by John T. Parsons [11] in the year 1940. The early
motion, which is required for either a 3D printer or a cutting systems used punch cards where different cards corresponded
machine which is widely used in any industry. The paper also to different jobs. With the advent of computers in the early
concentrates on creating a CAD tool independent interface with 1960’s the focus shifted to providing inputs to these cutting
inputs to the setup being given purely based on images drawn.
systems via computer programs and this methodology of
This simplifies the process with the user not needing to have any
computer knowledge at all. All image processing algorithms
providing control was christened “Computer Numerical
were designed and developed using Simulink – a part of Control” (CNC) [12]. Early CNC machines involved
MATLAB 2011b and controls to the setup were given using an providing measurements and input in the form of a
Arduino Uno (ATmega328) Rev. 3 board, in turn creating a programming language. This proved tedious to the user, since
perfect embedded system setup. defining a complicated shape with the help of a software
language is a near impossible task. A major improvement to
Keywords—3D Printer; Arduino Uno; CAD; CNC; Cutting this methodology was the invention of the Computer Aided
tool; DNC; Embedded system; Image Processing; Laser Cutting; Design (CAD) software in which the user can draw the shape,
Microcontroller depth and size of the job just by using a mouse or a stylus as
an input [13]. Recent CAD tools even allow the user to draw
I. INTRODUCTION in 3D making it a very easy task even for the most
complicated objects [14]. With progress in time, there are
With the heralding of the “Make in India” movement by newer variants of CNC machines known as DNC – Direct or
the Honourable Prime Minister of India, the past two years has Distributed Numerical Controlled machines in the market
displayed a huge spurt in research, development and [15]. In these systems, the instructions to the machine are sent
innovation [1]. Several organizations and individuals have block by block from a separate computer either wirelessly or
made much advancement in science and technology in various via an IP address.
fields such as agriculture [2], healthcare, education and also
the retail sector. From smart shopping carts [3] to cloud Though all the aforementioned methodologies (both CNC
computing based automatic pest detection systems [4], a lot of and DNC) prove to simplify work for the end user, in a small
these discoveries help mankind in several different ways. scale industry perspective it proves to be an economically
Similar types of automations can also be seen in the industry infeasible solution. The major reason for this is the initial cost
sector as well, with a lot of scope given to reduced production of the CAD software and also of the cutting equipment [16].
and maintenance costs along with reduced labour requirement. In developing nations importing such tools also involve huge
expenditure. Also, training the users in the software can be an
Given any type of industry, one of the major tasks arduous task especially if complex designs are involved and if
performed on a daily basis is cutting and welding [5]. the software is not available in the regional language of the
Automation of the same can be seen in the automobile and user.
aeronautic industry [6]. Cutting equipment can also be seen in
use in the lumber industry for cutting wood [7] and also in the This paper presents a novel methodology to overcome the
food industry to cut and process fish [8]. Several problems mentioned above, by enabling the user to input the
methodologies to cut material exist, varying from using a shape to be cut in the form of an image sans the CAD tool.
simple diamond edge knife [9] to a complicated LASER Not much research has been carried out in this regard whilst
system [10]. In all the above mentioned cases, controlling the those who have, convert the input image to a G-Code once
cutting equipment is one of the major tasks and requires a again requiring a CAD tool. The existing methodologies to
great deal of precision and accuracy. perform the same have been elaborated in Section II. In order
to make the setup more affordable, a simple homemade
In the early years cutting was performed using a remote embedded system setup which could be used to cut small
control based approach wherein the user manually
II. EXISTING METHODOLOGY As shown in Fig. 1, the setup mainly consists of two major
As mentioned apriori, there is very little literature available sections: one - the input unit, and the second - the actual X-Y
wherein a camera has been utilized to input data to a CNC moving mechanical base plate. The input unit comprises of a
machine. In most cases, the camera is used to detect any plain white paper, with dimensions 21 cm x 14.85 cm, on
manufacturing defects after the process of cutting is complete. which the shape has to be drawn and also a camera to capture
For instance in [17] and [18], camera’s are deployed to the image of the shape drawn.. The camera employed here is a
observe defects on wood and micro electrodes respectively. 20 megapixel i-Ball Robo K20 camera [25], with image
resolution of 5500 x 3640 pixels. The camera is fixed to a
Image processing has also been used in [19], where the stand at a height of 30 cm, such that it can focus the complete
authors define a way to identify the wear and tear involved in sketch area.
the cutting tool of a machine, using a camera. At the same
time, no provision has been made to use the camera to give The main components of the mechanical unit are a
inputs to control the same. conveyer belt and three DC motors. One of the DC motors is
utilized to move the conveyor belt in the x-axis direction. Two
In [20] and [21], the authors do discuss a methodology to separate DC motors are used along with wheels to assist in the
use a camera to identify the grooves of a key and pass that as Y-Axis motion of the system.
an input to a CNC system which duplicates keys. The method
describes an image processing flow to identify various aspects The conveyer belt is built on a wooden frame made up of
of a key, convert the same to G-Codes and feed the same to timber, whose dimensions are 35.2 cm x 25.2 cm x 12.5 cm. In
the CNC. The algorithm though accurate and precise will order to offer smooth rotation of the belt, five hollow
work only for duplicating keys and not any other simple aluminium rods of length 25 cm and diameter 1.5 cm are
shapes. Also a requirement of conversion to G-Code once placed parallel to each other in the frame. The major challenge
again persists and no mention of the setup to manufacture the of the complete setup was to select the best suited material for
key has been described. the belt. The material that has to be chosen should not be too
tight since it might damage the motor.
In [22], the authors introduce a new type of CNC which
involves the use of CAD oriented CNC (CADoCNC). This The first material of choice was a 100% cotton cloth.
involves utilization of image processing algorithms on a Unfortunately, since the cotton cloth was too soft, it did not
scanned image of the job at hand. Processes such as edge provide sufficient friction between the belt and the rods for its
thinning, noise removal and color conversion are involved and motion. So in order to improvise friction, a rough material had
the instructions are further converted to a dxf file which is to be considered. The second material of choice was then a
then fed to the CNC machine. More elaboration of the same Gunny bag, with dimensions same as that of the cotton cloth
can be seen in [23] and [24]. Similar to [21] there is once and due to its roughness, provided the right amount of friction.
again a dependency on the CAD tool and the results were The disadvantage of using the Gunny material was the lack of
tested using an emulator instead of using an original setup. elasticity. This created a huge force on the metal pipes causing
them to bend inwards. Finally, after a lot of experimentation,
In order to overcome these shortcomings, a cost effective an elastic band of 1 inch width was chosen and this worked
setup has been described in the next section and the algorithm perfectly well due to its property of being both elastic and
to identify the shape to be cut has been elaborated in detail in rough.
Section IV.
In order to rotate the conveyer belt, a DC motor is
III. SETUP connected to one of the aluminium rods. The input voltage
provided to the motor is 12V and provides a speed of 100 rpm.
As mentioned in Section I, the main novelty of the paper, In order to provide a regulated and constant voltage supply to
lies in the prototype which can be utilized for either cutting the DC motor and also to power on-off the motor when
small shapes or can also be utilized as a base for printing 3D required, an L293D Motor Control Board is utilized. The
objects. Another major feature of our setup is the way in controls to this motor board are provided from an Arduino
which inputs can be given. Instead of a traditional CAD tool, Uno Board which in turn takes decisions based on the image
the prototype receives input in the form of images drawn on a processing performed apriori in Simulink.
simple sheet of paper. The complete block diagram of our
prototype can be seen in Fig. 1. For the y-direction motion, the complete wooden frame
with conveyer belt is placed on two heavy duty wheels
controlled by two DC motors. To balance the frame, castor mammoth task for the processor to complete analysis of the
wheels, also known as omni-directional wheels are utilized. picture in the shortest time possible. In our application, since
These DC motors are also controlled by another set of L293D color is actually a redundant information (as the drawing
motor boards along with the same Arduino Uno. created is anyways in black and white), the image hence can
be converted to a suitable color model to reduce the total
The base plate on which the shape has to be carved or on number of bytes per pixel.
which the model is to be printed, has to be placed on the
conveyer belt and its maximum weight can be approximately
Obtain image of the shape to be
30 grams, for free motion of the conveyor belt. The dimension
printed or cut
of the cutting plate can be 21.8 cm x 16 cm. A stepper motor
setup along with a rack and pinion arrangement can also be
utilized for z-axis motion inturn assisting in printing 3 Convert it to intensity plane
dimensionally as well.
The complete setup mentioned above has been shown in
Fig. 2. Yes Is θ1 ≤ pxl No
≤ θ 2?
Image Inversion
Fig. 2. Hardware model of our setup utilized for cutting or 3D printing Count number of Vertices
The image processing algorithm utilized to control the
Arduino Uno and in turn the motors, has been described in Find distance between any two
detail in the next section. vertices