Convert Laser

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The purpose of this page is to document the conversion of our Chinese laser to use our preferred firmware, LinuxCNC.

Importing

See our page on importing the laser.

Why

Changing the firmware gives us a few advantages.

  • As an organization, we strongly value open source and this gives us the option of using a full open source stack to go from design to cut.
  • We have years of experience, training, and development on the current stack and have had a really positive experience with it.

Plan

The plan is to remove the controller and display panel that came with the laser and replace them with a computer running LinuxCNC, a I/O card, and a panel of our own design and needs. Our goal is to fit this all into in the new laser using the existing structure in a neat and beautiful way.

Software

Inkscape (Design) Design
Optionally, our KM-Laser Bundle
Custom Web interface Upload to laser + CAM
Name and link coming
LinuxCNC Firmware to run laser

Hardware

Motherboard/RAM/CPU 2 NICS
Somewhat small
Don't really need a lot of power to run LinuxCNC or the web app
Hard drive Just big enough to hold LinuxCNC with some room left over for gcode and raster images people upload
Power Supply Something small and cute
LinuxCNC compatible I/O card We chose a Mesa 7176E
It cost a little more than other options but we can use the extra NIC on the motherboard instead of having to add a parallel port.

In Progress

This page is in progress. More to come.