Remco, one of my patrons, shared this great project: using your 3D printer to plot 2D pictures. I liked it enough to make a how to video. This guide will take you through my failures and successes so you can pick up all of the tips you need to 2D print smoothly.

The cornerstone of this technique is Inkscape and two extensions/plugins. Inkscape is a free vector based graphics program. Remco’s tremendous guide made it easy for me to get up and running and hopefully for you too.

I mainly used the Prusa i3 MK3, Ender 5 and Artillery3D X1 for this video. Pretty much any 3D printer should be compatible. Remember that G2/G3 arc support must be enabled in Marlin, and probably is unless you turned it off yourself.

This is a cool novelty and well worth a go as a weekend project. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

If you are having random crashes of the print head, there is a fair chance you've left something off to the side in Inkscape that has been converted to gcode and sitting outside of the print…