Thursday Morning Gravity Wells

Since I have the MidTBot ESP32 plotter running properly, I thought I should look at better ways of generating G-Code than using BASIC and lots of print statements. Ed Nisley — from whom I’ve learned a lot — always seems to be doing interesting things using the gcmc – G-Code Meta Compiler, and it looks like a useful little language to learn.

Here’s the code to make at least half of the above:

/*
   osculating circles - scruss, 2021-01
   gcmc version

   Usage with midTbot / grbl_esp32:

   gcmc osccirc.gcmc | grep -v '^G64' > osccirc.gcode

   Or for SVG:

   gcmc --svg --svg-no-movelayer --svg-toolwidth=0.25 osccirc.gcmc | sed 's/stroke:#000000/stroke:#C80022/g;' > osccirc.svg
   
*/
comment("osculating circles - scruss, 2021-01");

/* machine constants */
up 	      = [-, -, 5.0mm];
down 	      = [-, -, 0.0mm];
park 	      = [5.0mm, 145.0mm, 5.0mm];
feedrate(6000mm);

/* model parameters */
centre	      = [100.0mm, 75.0mm];
r	      = 65.0mm;
lim_r	      = 3.0mm;
pr	      = r;
a	      = 0.0deg;
da	      = 6.0deg;
sc	      = 0.95;
comment("centre: ", centre, "; r: ", r, "; lim_r: ", lim_r, "; pr: ", pr, "; a: ", a, "; da: ", da, "; sc: ", sc);

/* counter / sense marker */
n	      = 0;

goto(up);
do {
   centre += [(pr-r)*cos(a), (pr-r)*sin(a)];
   goto([centre.x - r, centre.y]);
   goto(down);
   n++;
   if (n%2) {
      circle_cw(centre);
   }
   else {
      circle_ccw(centre);
   }
   goto(up);
   a += 360.0deg + da;
   a %= 360.0deg;
   pr = r;
   r *= sc;
} while (r >= lim_r);

/* end */
comment(n, " circles");
goto(park);