linuxcnc-rosh-laser

LinuxCNC configuration for a $100 chinese "laser engraver" using 7i92 ethernet motion control. I nickname it "rosh" because it came with what was looks like a regulatory compliance sticker that says it is "ROSH" (not ROHS).

As shipped, it has a microcontroller (arduino pro mini knock-off) with GRBL pre-loaded. Right now, my setup consists of point-to-point wiring to the microcontroller daughterboard to use the supplied stepper and laser drivers. It bypasses the microcontroller by tying its reset pin to GND. Later I hope to desolder the microcontroller board and replace it with a DB25 adapter.

I'm creating raster images using a little bit of custom software, pgmlaser.py. Contrary to the name, it can accept any image type known to the Python Imaging Library.

While the software was written to support PWM laser control, I have found that this doesn't give good results on wood. The result just is converted from a 1bpp dithered image and rastered at 450mm/min at a size of about 1" x 2/3".