Old makerspace laser cutter

Hardware
Search terms: Ebay 100w laser or Senhui laser (2800~3500 usd for laser cutter with shipping depending on source, ~350 usd for laser tube without shipping). RD-ACS controller (generic controller so used in lots of laser cutters).



Inkscape

 * 1) Make sure object is vector (if you import a svg or make your own drawing, it will be already a vector; however png's and jpg's aren't vectors)
 * 2) Select object, then open the Trace Bitmap menu (Path > Trace Bitmap)
 * 3) Play with the various single scan options, and click 'update' to see a preview
 * 4) Convert the object to a path (Path > Object to Path)
 * 5) Set stroke (Object > Fill and Stroke) of object to 0.25px and no fill
 * 6) For every different layer you want to cut/engrave on the laser (aka engraved with different power for gradients), you must create a new color of the stroke
 * 7) Save as as dxf (you need python-lxml for this part, apt-get install python-lxml or pip install lxml (doesn't work out of the box on mac))

Illustrator

 * 1) 0.25mm stroke, use a different color for each layer
 * 2) File > Export as dxf, use R13/LT95 for the dxf format

Rhino
Used by Swisskoo and marc

Laser software
The laser cutter is controlled by RDCam (version 5.2.06 installed on Atelier computer, other versions available on foo), it's manual is here. When installing, you have to install it in 'demo mode', otherwise Laserworks won't open without a cutter connected (also don't forget to select english ;).



RDCam would not install in crossover (gui for wine), but feel free to try. Please note that .rld files created in different versions of the software are not inter-compatible unfortunately.

Wood




Paper
No testing done yet

Acrylic


Virtually no testing done yet

Others
There still needs to be extensive testing done to see which materials work and which don't, but basically the gist of it is: don't use anything that has PVC in it, and don't use metal (unless for engraving -> need to explore options). There have been some tests with rubber (for stamps) as well, this needs to be properly documented and more testing needs to be done.