Difference between revisions of "Laser cutter/LaserCut/Usage"

Revision as of 17:00, 26 May 2014

This page will detail how to get the best out of LaserCut.

What is a cut versus and engrave?

The only difference of the two is that an engrave covers a bounded area with lots of small cuts. This means you can "engrave" lines into something using just cuts of a lower power.

Quirky Notes

The software has some oddities - there are things hidden behind scroll bars and please note: the enter key never saves settings (in many cases) so you must click "Ok" to save things.

Also at the moment the word "Download" really should be "Upload".

The long-running tools (such as "Preview" and "Calculate time") have no cancel button but pressing escape seems to exit them fine.

Demo Notes

Demo can export .MOL as long as the config file is reset to the defaults if you have at some point connected it to the laser properly and ran the non-demo program (for those interested the config line "CheckLayerCode=-1" seems to be added under "[DataCheck]" which crashes it; this presumably is added when uploading to the laser).

Saving in the demo:

Can save ECP files on exit or if selecting "New" from File menu.
Unite Lines are saved if ECP is imported again, but the laser cut/engrave/etc. settings for speed and power are lost
- This however is better then just leaving it as a DXF
.MOL exports are the best "final" file but any adjustments means re-creating them - they can be rather large files even for simple designs!

If the program continually crashes importing, the INI file has become corrupt (perhaps on a crash of the program). Copying the original again by running the bat file fixes this.

Tessellate

Select the option Set array output options from the toolbar.

Colours

To follow.

Machine Settings

To follow. Note that all the settings (including for instance the air nozzle blow)

@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 == Demo Notes ==
-Demo can export .MOL but perhaps not with the Soft Dog drivers installed or if it was recently connected to the laser cutter and the machine was not restarted.
+Demo can export .MOL as long as the config file is reset to the defaults if you have at some point connected it to the laser properly and ran the non-demo program (for those interested the config line "CheckLayerCode=-1" seems to be added under "[DataCheck]" which crashes it; this presumably is added when uploading to the laser).
 Saving in the demo:
 * Can save ECP files on exit or if selecting "New" from File menu.
 * Unite Lines are saved if ECP is imported again, but the laser cut/engrave/etc. settings for speed and power are lost
+** This however is better then just leaving it as a DXF
+* .MOL exports are the best "final" file but any adjustments means re-creating them - they can be rather large files even for simple designs!
 If the program continually crashes importing, the INI file has become corrupt (perhaps on a crash of the program). Copying the original again by running the bat file fixes this.