CNC Music Factory - MIDI to gcode

I'm making a note here - *huge success*

First output from 'mid2cnc.py', a program to convert MIDI to gcode linear moves, allowing one to play music on a CNC machine (will publish it when it's done!). The music is Jonathan Coulton's "Still Alive" from the ending credits of Portal.

Basically, it's possible to compute a combination of (distance, feedrate) that will cause the stepper motor to spin at an exact frequency corresponding to a musical note. With a little vector magic, the same can be done for (x, y, z, feedrate) to produce chords as the machine follows a 3D line through space.

TODO:
Handle more than 3 notes played at a time (drop some if there are not as many axes...)

Lock notes to their initial axis for their duration (maybe only an issue on my ghetto machine where the axis motors sound very different)

(try to) Improve frequency accuracy where 2 or more notes are played simultaneously (may be a CNC software issue)

A description of how it works is on my blog at http://tim.cexx.org/?p=633

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• midi
• gcode
• g-code
• cnc
• music
• portal
• still
• alive

[evi1wombat]

That is awesome.

... but does it CNC a cake if you turn the spindle on and put something underneath?

[rodstartube]

hahahh cnc wanted a break and begun to sing

[Kilohercas]

Portal 2 song ? :)

[dustymcdirt]

what happens if u play Devo backwards in it

[uberGruntSavedHalo]

2 people's brains could not comprehend the awesomeness of this, so thumbed down (and probably had an aneurysm.)

[zhuangw1991]

Crazy!!



[mibars]

Cool converter!

Took me some time to run this Python script though ;)

CNC mill singing tetris theme was huge "visitor magnet" at open days at our school... Kinda sad that it was more interesting than actual milling though...

[Blogapult]

@evi1wombat NO! The cake is a lie!

[RoboticusMusic]

Hope this bot doesn't lose sight of its original purpose and go broadway.

[karandex]

i tried some downloed midi, even made a solo track , but the output files in black. help

[sk7ca]

THIS IS AWESOME! :D everytime i hear this song it makes me think of old computers and how lovely my old amiga A500 is! ^^