Many products in the modern world are manufactured to some extent using computer numerical control (CNC) machines that use computers to automate machine operations in manufacturing. Although the concept is simple, the methods that guide these machines are actually often complex. A team of researchers, including the University of Tokyo, designed a system to demonstrate how to mitigate this complexity. draw2cut allows the user to draw the desired design directly onto the material to be cut or milled. In this case, the color-coded line drawn with a standard marker pen indicates that the 2 cutting systems drawn will be designed for wood without any prior knowledge of the CNC machine or its typical workflow.
It can be said that various techniques were intended to democratize certain skills or abilities before only time, money, luck, or these three techniques could be used. Plow, tractor, print publisher, internet – the list goes on. In recent years, things like 3D printing have been touted as bringing custom-made high-quality manufacturing into the homes. Although not yet seen how realistic this is, it highlights the true desire of many people to have greater control over what they want. 3D printing is of course just a digital manufacturing method, and in many cases more mature technologies using molds or CNC machines are often used to manufacture objects. Although well built, using a CNC machine is far from trivial.
“Operating a CNC milling machine can be difficult because it often requires users to first create 3D models using computer-aided design (CAD) software,” said Maria Larsson, an assistant professor of the project at the University of Tokyo User Interface Research Group. “Our latest research explores the idea that in several cases, if the user can directly mill and cut the material they want the CNC machine to do without modeling the CAD. We were inspired by carpenters to mark the wood, and thinking, why can’t we do similar personal manufacturing systems?”
To do this, Larsson and her team created Draw2Cut, essentially a novel vision system, coupled with intuitive workflows and simple steps to create a CAD plan for CNC computers. Assuming someone has an idea of the item they want to create, they can use a specific set of colors to draw their design directly onto certain materials. Then draw 2 scales, then image the material and sketch and interpret the visual data to create a 3D CAD plan that will be exported to the CNC machine. The machine can be fed by the actual material drawn by the user and will be cut and milled accordingly. Although they have only tried wood, different CNC machines can use different materials, including metal, if needed.
“The most challenging part of the project is how to implement this workflow in practice. We found that the key element is the development of a drawing language where symbols and colors are assigned various meanings to produce clear machine descriptions.” In this case, the purple line marks the general shape of the mill, red and green marks and lines, and then provides instructions for cutting directly into the material or producing gradients separately. Despite any project that is connected with any project in the real and virtual world, we also face the challenge of getting our camera setup right and calibrated, in the challenge of achieving acceptable precision, the acceptable precision can be cut out.
While draw2cut cannot fully create projects of the level of quality that experienced professionals can produce, its main purpose is not to replace people, but to open up this way of manufacturing to more people, which is one of the broader topics of the user interface research group.
“We have been involved in a series of participants’ designs and perfect drawings for 2 ticks,” Larsson said. “Expert users may also benefit from expressing their design intentions faster.” Our goal is to expand possibilities in the future with a wider range of stroke patterns and symbols. You can also customize the color language according to different needs. Our source code is open source, so developers with different needs can customize it accordingly. ”
