EngraveLab, WINcnc, Testra and Linkmotion

[Richard McMahon]

Hi,

I am currently using Corel Draw X3 and Linkmotion software for my laser engraver/cutter set up and I would like to know what different types of software is out there for cutting AND engraving in the same file. Linkmotion software won't do this.
I was looking at SignLabs' EngraveLab 7.1 but it looks like it is just another software set and doesn't control the actual laser.
I would like something that can raster a picture THEN cut it out after. Having to reset/restart Linkmotion every time you go from cutting to engraving is getting to be a PITA.

Linkmotion costs about $1300 and the new version can do 3D (or so I am told)
WINcnc is about the same with hardware boards to output to the laser.
Testra is about $1500 but you get a 32Meg buffer and all the motion control stuff to go with it.
EngraveLab 7.1 can be had for around $900 and up.

Can some people help out with the pro's and con's of these packages?

I would like to use grayscale picture engraving where the laser modulates the beam strength depending on the value of the gray scale pixels. Linkmotion will do this with cutting but not for engraving.

I have PhotoGrav but find that I am having limited success with it (I will do more testing at a later date But I still want to cut and engrave in the same file)
Any help will be very beneficial and we can post all our needs and the programs' shortcomings on this thread.

Thanks a bunch in advance.
Richard.

P.S. I have left the same post on the CNCzone.com site as well so I hope there will be a few responses to this as I think most people will benefit from knowing what is out there.

[Joe Pelonio]

What kind of laser do you have? Mine, and probably most used by members here can do what you want directly from Corel to the laser. I use Corel X-3 exclusively, no additional software for engraving/cutting other than an occasional touch up of bitmaps using Photoshop.

[Richard McMahon]

Hey Joe.
I have a home built one with a 30 watt ULS air cooled laser tube.
Here is a link to what it can do and how it works.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=wi4dKAseDCg

The table has a standard ZnSe 2" focal length with air assist and stainless steel flat top. When cutting through Acrylic I use 1/2 aluminum angle as stand offs about 4-6 inches apart.
The rest of the time when cutting chipboard, paper etc I just lay the material on the top of the table which stops the combustion of the gases underneath the job causing it to char the surface.
It all works pretty well. it can cut/engrave at 15 inches per sec but usually between 0.1 to 6 ips is the norm.
To get slightly off topic.......
I have done a lot of mirror engraving and some granite slabs and this is where I am having the most problems, with the granite. I just can't seem to get the definition that you guys get. When I set the resolution to 300 dpi it seems to produce a very fine line but not when engraving. The dot size seems to be between 3-5 thou (I'm a machinist so I can guess these sizes fairly accurately) so it should produce pretty much what I am looking for but it doesn't.
I think I am doing everything right but I may be looking through rose coloured glasses and not seeing the bigger picture.
I have the Photoshop action one of the blokes here has very kindly given to all and sundry but I think my processing needs a bit of a tweek. They come out close but no where near what you produce.
I think you, Joe, have set a bench mark for the rest of us to follow. Your work is terrific and I would go all gooey inside if I could produce what you do.
Thanks for the response.
Rich.

[Frank Corker]

Hey Joe.
I have a home built one with a 30 watt ULS air cooled laser tube.
Here is a link to what it can do and how it works.


Brilliant! Very smooth, nice video work too.

[Joe Pelonio]

That's quite an accomplishment to be able to make that yourself. As for your problem with doing both engraving and cutting in the same job, I think that may be in the firmware in our machines, which will take the corel file as sent and engrave any bitmaps first, then cut any vectors. You will somehow have to add that to yours. I haven't the technical expertise to help you accomplish that.

[Mike Null]

I concur with Joe on all counts.

[Neal Schlee]

Richard the Testra controller & software should do everything you need. Last I checked they had a raster/vector gray scale windows driver. I see Emissions Technologies now uses the Testra setup for their laser systems, they used to use Soulstan/Linkmotion. The Testra SSLaser setup seems to be a good bang for the buck. Tom at Testra had emailed me a copy of the Windows driver to checkout. At the time I looked into it a few years ago they only had a Win98 driver, this may have changed by now.

Neal

[Richard Rumancik]

Richard, I came across the Testra product several years ago and tried to run the demo. At that time it ran in a DOS window and it seemed to crash my computer a lot. The problem I have is that their website does not seem to have any current info. They still say that the SS4544 runs on Win 95 and 98. It still says that the demo runs in a DOS window. The main price list is dated 2001. It just seems as if all the info is many years old. I don't know if they have updated the hardware/firmware in that time.

You will probably want to have their control panel as well.
http://www.testra.com/Software/ssLASpan/sslaspan.htm

The price list shows the laser package at $2000 but that is 2003 pricing. That price is reasonable if it has similar capabilities to current laser
systems.

I think they could have a good product but I would try to find some satisfied users. (At one point I think they said that they assisted in developing the control system for the original ULS lasers but I don't see that info on the website now.)

If you find out more about it please report back what you learn . . .

[Richard Rumancik]

Richard - I took a look at your video of your machine. Very impressive. I was considering doing something like this many years ago but in retrospect it was probably better that I bought a commerical unit. The mechanics is not trivial but he biggest hurdle was the software/driver method, and the Testra unit seemed to be about the only thing out there at the time that behaved like a commercial laser system. Seems like Solustan has something that is "close" but lacks the capability of combining vector and raster in one file. Have you communicated with them about this?


Linkmotion costs about $1300 and the new version can do 3D (or so I am told). . .
I would like to use grayscale picture engraving where the laser modulates the beam strength depending on the value of the gray scale pixels. Linkmotion will do this with cutting but not for engraving.

I have PhotoGrav but find that I am having limited success with it (I will do more testing at a later date But I still want to cut and engrave in the same file)


If you search on 3D lasering on this forum you may find a lot of people disillusioned with it. It may help sell lasers but once the user finds out that (a) it is difficult to make 3D greyscale files and (b) it is too slow and (c) customers are not willing to pay for it, then it becomes a novelty.

On the other hand, I am currently working on an acrylic "3D" mold for a customer to make imprints in clay. But I am not sending greyscale to the laser driver. I convert the g/s image to b/w and then it runs like any other raster bitmap file. (I have not done a time-test on the same file plotted as a 3D greyscale image, but I believe trying to modulate the power in real time is going to be a lot slower than sending a b/w bitmap at constant power. Sometime I will do a test to compare run-time.)

Photograv uses g/s input but ultimately the image needs to be converted to b/w for lasering.

Are you saying that Linkmotion will follow a vector greyscale line (of varying greyscale) and modulate the power along the path? In which situation do you use this feature? Does the Solustan system allow you to assign multiple speed/power settings to colors in CorelDraw like the standard laser systems do?

[Richard McMahon]

Hi guys,
Sorry for the late reply. I had a few virus's in the system and I had to reformat due to crashes and the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. (I would love to kneecap the #$%$%##'s that write those things)
Thanks for the kudos,too.

I contacted Testra a few months ago and the reply was they used to do the ULS.inc systems up until a few years ago but they didn't give me any info on what the controller set up was like apart from what was on the web site.

I went to Emission Tech and checked out the set up and it does look very impressive compared to what I have now but I have to justify the extra expense of about $3000 AUD to do the raster and vector in 1 file.

Linkmotion does a very good job for a software driver with no hardware and, for the $599 I paid for it, the occasional lockup is bearable as it only takes about 40secs to restart the computer. When in use, you can't use the mouse or do anything else because Solustan disable all the windows controls and subsets that they don't need to get the most from the program. This is where most of the problems arise and if you stick to not touching anything while it is in use then most of the time it will return from the job with no problems.
Linkmotion will do vector cutting with 8 different colors assigned different power/speed settings and are all configurable just like you guys have and I have wondered if I could draw a picture with the different colours and "cut" a gray scale picture in vector setup. (I'll try that when I get some much needed free time)
With raster engraving it seems to smooth out the pixelated bits of the picture but still keeps the square corners. I am impressed with that. Blocky pictures with Text and Clipart all have the same quality when engraved which I think is one of the best aspects of the program but I seem to have an issue with very thin lines that engrave a lot thicker than they should. It could be my setup in Corel that needs tweaking as I am still getting to grips with all the things you can do with it.
Thanks for all the replies.
Rich.

[Richard McMahon]

The last update I got from Solustan (not a program one) by mail was that they can now do 3D engraving with Linkmotion and I assume stamp making would be one of the uses with the graduated/tapered sides on the rubber for strength and stability when printing.
It is also USB compatible now with their controller board and I assume you would be able to use the computer after sending the job for "printing" as it states this in the documentation.
For me to upgrade will cost $1300. Yep. No discount for regular users.

Also, I would recommend a computer with at least 3 Gig Hz speed and 2 Gig Ram for it to be usable. The 800 Mhz they recommend is too slow to be of any use and 512 Meg ram is way too low for the graphics programs to run in with a large file.
I started with a system around these low figures and had way too many issues to even get the thing to work properly and when I upgraded to a fast machine most of the previous problems I had went away. It took me three months to find out the hard way and the help from Dhiren at Solustan was without fault with detailed replies usually sent the following day.
I made my machine first with a combination of steppers and servo motors but had too many issues, as mentioned above, and rewired the thing to use just steppers which I like due to zero maintenance on them and less to go wrong.
I also have a 5 phase stepper motor powering a wave drive for the rotary attachment that also works very well. It took me a little while to work out how to use the 5 phase motors with the 4 phase setup but it turned out to be very simple in the end and I just have to unplug a connector and plug in another to use it.
I have 2 saved files for rotary and normal use of Linkmotion and I just load in the appropriate one when I need it which takes about 10 secs.
The setup works well but I would like to raster and vector in the same file.

If we have nothing to wish for then we have nothing to live for!
Richard.

[Richard Rumancik]

Richard - Thanks for the info on Solustan software.

Can you please clarify what package you originally bought from them? Is it the LM300 "LinkMotion for CO2 Laser" package? Now when you say you need to upgrade to get 3D, is it an upgrade to the driver you have or does it fully replace what you have? I see that they have a USB board with driver, but what do they call the software package that you would need?

On the website it says:
"LinkMotion for USB port
Print directly from your favorite application
Includes USB controller board and LinkMotion driver"

but they don't seem to be aiming this for laser use. (It seems to be for CNC g-code applications such as router etc). Does your laser use g-code? I can't find where they describe the 3D laser applications. Can you provide info or a link?

[Richard McMahon]

Hi Rich.
The program they use for the lasers is "Virtual machine for engravers" and is equivalent to the LM300 package and is on the install disk that they send to you. Linkmotion is also used with Routers and Milling machines but why would you pay $1300 for a driver instead of just buying Mach3, with endless updates and wizards for free, for the princely sum of $150..
The upgrade I think is a full replacement as you need the USB card to interface with it. I wonder if they installed some cheap ram on board to buffer the jobs as it can be a pain to load every job individually and have to sit waiting for Linkmotion to process the file again. I would have thought it would stay resident in memory but it doesn't seem to.
The software doesn't use G code for the laser set up I have and I have no idea how it works for Routers etc. Just a driver for the printer port (USB now).
Even if the computer does lock up and won't respond (I hope they have fixed this problem) it will always finish off the job in hand and you can still stop the job by pressing the "0" (zero) key. You just have to reset the computer to get everything back, but as I say, it is an infrequent problem that usually won't arise if you don't move the mouse and now it only happens after a few jobs when I forget.

The software protection is by Dongle which I hate but I suppose they have to protect their investment (but I know of 1 person that has cracked it and was selling it cheaply on eBay). I also wish it would be good for 2-3 copies so I could use it on another machine as I really wouldn't like to pay another $1300 for another installation.
I do think they should have a reduced price for their latest software for previous purchases in light of the bugs in the one I bought.
I hope this answers a few of your questions.
As I have said before, it does it's job well except for a few (quite minor) bugs but you should be allowed access to a bug free version.

Rich.

[Richard Rumancik]

. . . they can now do 3D engraving with Linkmotion and I assume stamp making would be one of the uses with the graduated/tapered sides on the rubber for strength and stability when printing.

Richard - this was the area I was confused about. I could not find anything on the site about 3D for lasers so I asked Dhiren Shah at Solustan. He says that they do not have the capability to do 3D laser engraving.

He does say that PhotoGrav works fine (which is not grayscale; PhotoGrav creates a b/w bitmap). So if you are having problems with that maybe Dhiren can help.

But according to Dhiren, Linkmotion cannot adjust power on-the-fly to generate a 3D image so perhaps you have misinterpreted the product info. But as I said earlier, I don't think you will make money with 3D unless it is for making molds. You mentioned rubber stamps - I don't know how many people here are doing stamps with a laser. I think it is only profitable if you can do many stamps at a time.


. I have done a lot of mirror engraving and some granite slabs and this is where I am having the most problems, with the granite. I just can't seem to get the definition that you guys get. When I set the resolution to 300 dpi it seems to produce a very fine line but not when engraving. The dot size seems to be between 3-5 thou (I'm a machinist so I can guess these sizes fairly accurately) so it should produce pretty much what I am looking for but it doesn't.

If you want a smaller dot maybe you should consider a 1.5" FL lens. Ths should give you a .003" dot. But perhaps 300 dpi is too high for granite. Do some searches on this and see what had been suggested before. I think Rodne and others have suggested using a lower dpi. You might think higher dpi = better image but this is not always the case. If the dot is too large for the resolution then you get a muddy looking image. Perhaps try 250 or 200 and see what it does.

[Phil Garcia]

Richard, My hat is off to you.... I saw your video... that's amazing!!!!
As far as software Corel does everythiing I need..sorry I can't help there.

[Richard McMahon]

Thanks for the info guys,
I have been experimenting with Photograv over the last few days and I think the problem I had was with the machine settings. I have now used a "customized" version of one of the ULS setups and "SAVED" it. That was where I had the problem, not saving to configuration file for the machine.
I set the machine to 200 dpi and 0.008" dot pitch and converted all my files to 96 dpi and they turned out so much better. I know Photograv/Imagelaz suggest a multiple of the dpi for best results but these work fairly good for me.
I have now used 150 dpi and will try 200 dpi later but the files are getting to be very usable.
I Use Cherry wood (same as everyone else) for the substrate and set the "Extent" slider down to 1-3 then all you need do is adjust the middle slider on the gray scale histogram to get more dots or less on the picture depending on how you want the picture to engrave.
I think I'm nearly there and I can process a picture in about 40 seconds which is grand.
All I have to do now is see my friendly tile centre fellow and "borrow" some granite off-cuts to test on.
Thanks for the help and kudos.
I hope to be able to help others here as well with my newly aquired skills
:)
warm regards
Richard.
P.S. Here are a couple of pictures that I did yesterday on mirror tiles from Ikea, 300mm square (11.75"). Most take between 3-4 hours to engrave at 3" per sec at full power (30 watts). The mirrors are reflecting the ceiling so they look better.