Laser Cutter - it's here!

[MARK HANCOX]

Dear all

Our very own Laser Cutter has arrived; we spent a large part of DM on Thursday evening taking it out of the crate and into position in the Radio Museum workshop.

Tony took a few photos - Tony, please can you share those photos in this thread?

Next step is to get it working, but it's very satisfying just to see it there, it feels like a big step forward for us. I know that Morgan already has a to-do list in his head, which will guide us to where we need to be.

Once we do get it working, I will bring champagne ... ! Or an acceptable alternative, if people don't like champagne.

Cheers

Mark Hancox

(DM Secretary)

[MARK HANCOX]

Dear all

Please see attached, a few photos of our new Laser Cutter in the Radio Museum workshop. While there's still some work to do to get it fully active (don't ask me to explain what, ask someone clever like Al!), there have been a few test cuts already.

At the moment, while the Laser Cutter has castors for ease of movement, the chiller is just on the floor, and also we have nowhere to position a laptop on or by the cutter. Chris has suggested that we produce a trolley extension for these - we'll start drawing something up this Thursday. All ideas welcome.

Cheers

Mark Hancox

(DM Secretary)

[MARK HANCOX]

Quick update on the Laser Cutter : see attached photos, at a basic level it's now up and running, and able to etch (cutting is the next thing to try).

Cheers

Mark

[Morgan Barke]

In addition to your update...

I have made a mount for the chiller and air pump, so it can be moved all together on its original casters. I just need to manage the cables and tubes neatly to complete the task.

Next job will be to create the skirt for the roller shutter.

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[Al Johnson]

I added a very basic page for the laser cutter on the web site yesterday.
Please add any useful information. The laser software page is now linked from
it, so it's findable without using the search function. We'll need to document
the process of exporting from design software packages and importing in
rdworks. It imported LibreCAD dxf files fine, al

I've also made a script for winetricks to download and install rdworks using
wine. It's at our github site:
https://github.com/DerbyMakers/rdworks-helpers
Documentations's a bit basic so far, and it's only been tested on ubuntu
17.10, but since what it's automating worked on Fedora 27 too it should work
elsewhere. Perhaps even on Macs. It doesn't work on Ubuntu 16.04 though.

Regarding the rdworks scaling being odd with wine, it seems only to happen
when you're zoomed out far enough that you can see the whole 'page'. Zoom in
and it's fine.

On Sunday, 22 April 2018 09:17:33 BST Morgan Barke wrote:
> In addition to your update...
> I have made a mount for the chiller and air pump, so it can be moved all
> together on its original casters. I just need to manage the cables and
> tubes neatly to complete the task.
> Next job will be to create the skirt for the roller shutter.
>
> On 22 April 2018 at 08:19, MARK HANCOX <mhan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Quick update on the Laser Cutter : see attached photos, at a basic level
> > it's now up and running, and able to etch (cutting is the next thing to
> > try).
> >
> > Cheers
> > Mark
> >
> > On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 5:22 PM, MARK HANCOX <mhan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Dear all
> >>
> >> Please see attached, a few photos of our new Laser Cutter in the Radio
> >> Museum workshop. While there's still some work to do to get it fully
> >> active
> >> (don't ask me to explain what, ask someone clever like Al!), there have
> >> been a few test cuts already.
> >>
> >> At the moment, while the Laser Cutter has castors for ease of movement,
> >> the chiller is just on the floor, and also we have nowhere to position a
> >> laptop on or by the cutter. Chris has suggested that we produce a trolley

> >> *extension* for these - we'll start drawing something up this Thursday.

> >> All ideas welcome.
> >>
> >> Cheers
> >> Mark Hancox
> >> (DM Secretary)
> >>
> >> On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 12:33 PM, MARK HANCOX <mhan...@gmail.com>
> >>
> >> wrote:
> >>> Dear all
> >>>
> >>> Our very own Laser Cutter has arrived; we spent a large part of DM on
> >>> Thursday evening taking it out of the crate and into position in the
> >>> Radio
> >>> Museum workshop.
> >>>

> >>> Tony took a few photos - *Tony*, please can you share those photos in

> >>> this thread?
> >>>
> >>> Next step is to get it working, but it's very satisfying just to see it
> >>> there, it feels like a big step forward for us. I know that Morgan
> >>> already
> >>> has a to-do list in his head, which will guide us to where we need to
> >>> be.
> >>>

> >>> Once we *do* get it working, I will bring champagne ... ! Or an

> >>> acceptable alternative, if people don't like champagne.
> >>>
> >>> Cheers
> >>> Mark Hancox
> >>> (DM Secretary)
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Derby Makers" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an

> > email to derby-makers...@googlegroups.com.

[Al Johnson]

A couple of interesting developments on the software front - an Inkscape
plugin and a prerelease version of VisiCut which may work with our cutter. The
Thunderlaser cutter they're tested with uses a RuiDa controller and is
normally driven with RDWorks.
https://github.com/jnweiger/inkscape-thunderlaser
https://github.com/fablabnbg/VisiCut/releases
I've added some details to our cloud account for the moment.

[Al Johnson]

We confirmed last night that both of these can send things to the cutter, with
quirks and/or limitations, so we have some alternatives to RDWorks. It was
just a quick test, so we'll look into it more in June. VisiCut looks the more
interesting of the two, as it can import defined settings for different
materials and cutters. As it is you can select the configurations for several
hackspaces, and there's a defined way that we could get ours added to the list.

Grant - can you give details of the plugin you use to export DXF from
Inkscape? Ideally add it to the laser software page on the web site. I've
found some people doing a multi-step manual method, but it's not as friendly
as a direct output from a plugin.