Ink/Stitch

https://inkstitch.org/

by Tomte • 4 years ago

232 38 4 years ago

inkstitch.org

luguenth• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

Uh, Maybe I'm being over-sensitive - but is there any context for the six-sided star embroidery..

gilleain2• 4 years ago

I see what you mean, but sometimes a star is just a star :)

seszett• 4 years ago

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.

atrus2• 4 years ago

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.

pfranz• 4 years ago

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?

atrus2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

I think they target Linux as the primary OS, MacOS is second class citizen, perhaps for the best.

blable2• 4 years ago

Thank you for introducing me to this. I've been looking for this very function.

midnightclubbed• 4 years ago

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.

soperj2• 4 years ago

Honestly, I feel like it must be complete familiarity with Illustrator. I feel the same way about using Illustrator since I learned inkscape first.

detritus2• 4 years ago

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).

bennyp1012• 4 years ago

100% OT - but the wooden cable grips on the DIY Embroidery Machine tutorial really appeal to me!

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/44113605/47873925-...

jstanley2• 4 years ago

Seems strange to go to the trouble of making them out of wood when there's evidently a 3d printer available.

bichonnages• 4 years ago

Wood is fun to work with! Very rewarding.

gearhart• 4 years ago

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!)

Karliss• 4 years ago

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.

bennyp1012• 4 years ago

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

gilleain2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

Buy a plotter. There are many second hand ones on the market.

mkl2• 4 years ago

I agree. Easier, cheaper, better results.

snarfy• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

Lots of fun!

detritus2• 4 years ago

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!).

mkl2• 4 years ago

They have instructions for making a DIY G-code embroidery machine: https://inkstitch.org/tutorials/embroidery-machine/

jasonjayr• 4 years ago

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.

lucb1e• 4 years ago

Better title:

Ink/Stitch: open-source machine embroidery design platform based on Inkscape

dang• 4 years ago

Ink/stitch: an Inkscape extension for machine embroidery design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16074346 - Jan 2018 (20 comments)

purpleidea• 4 years ago

Cool project-- however the #1 thing I'd expect to find on the homepage are some screenshots and a list of supported hardware (the embroidery machines) -- did I miss these or are they intentionally absent for some reason?

rkagerer• 4 years ago

Sample gallery: https://inkstitch.org/tutorials/inspiration/

Ink/Stitch

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