3d printers and robots

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by EricH

Gcode doesn't exactly do well moving in anything other than a straight line. Most machines, including 3D printers, use Gcode. What this means is that for most machines, the circles are simply very small straight line movements.

Also note: You're talking about simple X-Y movement here. You move a distance X, you move a distance Y, you can do both at once by going point-to-point... but moving in a circle is pretty tough. Not impossible, just tough. You're dealing with two quadratic variables instead of just one or none...

Isn't circular interpolation via the G03 command actually quite good on most CNC machines, ie better than just linking a bunch of small line segments? Maybe I'm incorrect, but it seems like it would be more effective, accurate, and efficient for a 3D printer to read a G03 command rather than a huge block of G01 X Ys. Perhaps most 3D print controllers aren't advanced enough to do this kind of interpolation though, and need to run through a bunch of segments instead...