Excellent laser cutting course at benchspace Cork, Creative Hub for Craft, Design & Creative Businesses
Use Inkscape for creating the files to laser cut Draw Freely | Inkscape
Before saving for machine, select all and Path – Object to Path – will convert any text to path for laser cutter, but after that can no longer edit text so do last. Do save as a copy to USB stick to transfer to the laser cutter laptop.
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On Benchspace laptop, Drag SVG file to “convert to plt” folder. Then launch Lasercut 5.3 on taskbar app. File – import to get your file into the app. Once your image is on the screen you can select elements individually, and assign different colours to each layer on the layers panel. This means you can select different laser operations (cut, engrave etc.) to each element. In layers panel arrange the layers from top to bottom, this is the order in which they will be done. So good to make sure the major cuts are done after any linework for accuracy. You can assign power and speed values to each layer here as well. When done save the file (you may need to delete the current job first) and hit download. If the machine’s software isn’t showing the geometry correctly on the job, you may need to add additional nodes to the file on Inkscape. Select the entire job and click the “insert new nodes” tool. Every click will add nodes between existing ones.
On the machine itself, press escape to clear any existing jobs, and your current job shoukd appear on the LCD screen. Load your media, and use the arrow keys to position the laser head where you want to cut the job. Adjust the height of the bed with the Z button to focus the laser. Use the test button to see the outline of the job to make sure it will fit. If needed you can tape the media to the bed to keep it level. Then close the lid with both hands, and press the start button and you should hear it beep. Make sure the extractor is turned on and never leave the machine unattended during a cut. If the job needs to be interrupted for any reason, press pause and you can open the lid to make any adjustments and resume afterwards.
Array output options gives you the option to do multiples from the software, can make rows and columns of multiples, and add gaps in between.
