Having some preliminary thoughts about LinuxCNC's appropriateness to be a laser cutter, like 120W CO2. The other option is the open-source Lasersaur or Axecut. Those aren't particularly advanced trajectory planners or anything.
Can it be a good tool for lasering? I did see where some people had done it with some hacks, but I don't know how practical they are. There was something about using a negative Z-value to turn on the laser. A lot of things come to mind. One, often the laser needs to turn on and off quickly, without stopping. If it's technically implemented as a Z-move, it would slow to move the nonexistent Z-axis. Would that work by just changing the Z-acceleration to something ridiculously high? Two, sometimes we do reduce the cut power, to only mark the surface instead of cutting it. Initially you reduce the depth of cut by increasing speed, but if it's paper, you can't increase the speed enough, you have to cut back on the power. And the required power will change inside the document. How would that get specified, just with a differing Z-depth? When not at the specified speed due to acceleration limits, the software needs to reduce the power to avoid delivering more energy/mm than the user specified. Actually this sounds like the easiest part, presuming we can get an accurate instantaneous speed. All power adjustments come via a PWM pin. Danny ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial! https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
