Lasercut 5.3

[Paul Nichols]

Hi,

Is it possible to install the lasercut 5.3 program on my computer, apply all layers and cutting settings and then open it on the hackspace laser cutter computer to save time?

(I have tried installing, but run in to difficulty. Just wondered if this is worth pursuing)

Cheers!

Paul

[Russ Garrett]

We don't support this because it results in the power limits we've
been set being overridden.

(It's a massive hack anyway. The software needs a hardware dongle to
work properly, for some ridiculous reason.)

Russ

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Russ Garrett
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[stephen o'brien]

See here for more detail..;.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#search/lasercutter/1529048c3a6e384b

[Billy]

We've had problems with this. When saving the cutting pattern, people were also saving the settings which were different from the settings that the laservutter was set up with.

This led to some of the power problems we were having, as people using their own copies of Lasercut 5.3 were causing the laser to try to do things that it wasn't set-up to do..

It's better to use your favourite graphics program, and work out how to optimise the cutting from there.

If you're using LibreCAD, then use layering, with an identical reference point on each seperate layer, and then export each layer to a seperate DXF, then use the reference point to jion them together again. This will allow you to tweak the settings for each layer seperately which will give a more effective cut/etch.

But please con't use your own copy of the Lasercut 5.3 software.

[Paul Nichols]

Thank you for the replys!

No worries, glad I checked.

I'll look into those different options you suggested.

Cheers,

Paul.

On Thursday, March 3, 2016 at 9:52:07 AM UTC, Paul Nichols wrote:

[Billy]

Have you done the lasercutter induction?

This is one of the things that should have been explained, though i think that it was only added in recently, when the maintainers were having to deal with the fluctuating power settings.

[Russ Garrett]

On 3 March 2016 at 10:07, Billy <bi...@billycomputersmith.com> wrote:
> If you're using LibreCAD, then use layering, with an identical reference
> point on each seperate layer, and then export each layer to a seperate DXF,
> then use the reference point to jion them together again. This will allow
> you to tweak the settings for each layer seperately which will give a more
> effective cut/etch.

Different layer *colours* in the DXF should come through as different
layers in LaserCut, although this may not be the case for all CAD
programs as unfortunately the DXF file format is a mess. It works for
me in QCad Pro.

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Billy]

Thanks Russ.

I hadn't tried that solution.

I'll try that next time, as it seems a simpler hack than the work-around that i found.

[Robert Hunt]

If you use Inkscape with the DXF export plugin then you can use the custom colour palette we created at Nottinghack:

https://wiki.nottinghack.org.uk/wiki/Laser_cutter/Inkscape#Custom_Colour_Palette

After some experimentation we found that only 7 colours survive the export despite LaserCut defining 39 distinct colours, this may be down to the DXF export though. We've found it quite helpful especially when setting up cuts and etches in the same design.

-Rob