Drillpic is a tool that generates GCODE for your CNC mill. You load a picture and it will generate a half tone pattern for drilling a layered material.

I first posted drillpic on thingiverse in February 2013. Since then I saw a great talk by Bret Victor. One of the things I took away from that was how important it is to shorten the feedback loop when creating. So if it takes an hour to see what difference a change I make has had – it really limits my creative potential. I wouldn’t try anything crazy for example, because I wouldn’t want to waste time in getting the thing created.

With this in mind I rewrote drillpic – which was a command line program, to be more like a graphics package – so I can move a fader and see the result.

I also added:

• A new draw mode where the tool will stay in the material,
• Ability to offset rows with a sine wave.

Get it from here.