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iGull wrote:

bdring wrote:What does the new RJ45 connector do? Is that another control method? I don't see anything in LaserCAD. Does any one have a picture or PDF documentation yet?

Mine is supposed to be shipping today.

I'm guessing exactly that - a network interface hopefully - maybe a web control interface even (that may be wishful thinking 'though )

Cheers

Neil

It is a network access - don't need USB to get file from LaserCAD to controller. So other talk of USB from BootCamp is mute!

Marco posted the docs (limited but you'll get the idea) over at LightObject.info.

There is a newer version of LaserCAD. It has this for the communications modes. I would think this would make a Mac attempt easier.

bdring wrote:There is a newer version of LaserCAD. It has this for the communications modes. I would think this would make a Mac attempt easier.

This is looking promising - I'm interested to see if Tim's trial with the previous versions works on the Mac PC emulator.

Should get my hardware temporarily wired today and trialled with Lasersaur's LasaurApp.

Cheers

Neil

I have used Parallels, VirtualBox and VM ware's Fusion on my imac and Fusion worked better for me. One thing to keep in mind is that you have to bound the resources available to Fusion and it's vms. I only let it have access to 500 meg of memory and 1 processor. My imac is dual core with 4 gig of memory. We have a quad core with 12 gig and I think it configured for 2 cores and 4 gig of memory. I also don't let the VMs access to all of osx file system, I have one folder shared between osx and all of the VMs. I have been running this configuration for a couple of years and have not had the first issue with Fusion. In fairness to Parallels and VirtualBox it was over 2 years ago it tried them and I did not have any experience with any vm application on a imac.

I'm running a XP vm and multiple Linux vms doing something simular to what you are talking about. We have a Java app which converts GCODE to a motion control format and sends it to TI Luminary based laser/motion controller for execution. We are using TCP/IP because it is platform independent. With USB there is alway a driver issue. We also have a Arduino based safety app which monitors fans, pump, water flow water temp, exhaust fan flow and door switches and keeps the Luminary and Java app informed.

We have enough working to do DXF or GCODE and control the motion but haven't actually powered up the laser and cut. We have done some work for TIFF files but haven't added the raster functions to the Luminary. One thing I want to add before actually powering the laser and cutting is a laser current meter for the Luminary.

iGull wrote:This is looking promising - I'm interested to see if Tim's trial with the previous versions works on the Mac PC emulator.

Thought I posted a quick note about this last night, but must have not hit Submit. Regardless, I wrote up the whole story today and posted it on my blog.

The highlight is that it works fine with VMWare Fusion. Here is a shot of both PHCad and CorelDraw running on the Mac. The blog article shows other pics and talks about the process.

This looks very promising Tim - thanks for trying this out.

I have a copy of 'Virtualbox' from my friend - it was from Sun (free as I recollect). I'll need to see if it runs in snow leopard - I have a real winXP install, so can load that on (painfull I do like the idea of just keeping it in a window rather than the original method of taking over the whole screen - makes it a lot more useable.

It's really a pity that there isn't a native Mac version - however ...

The LO DSP seems to have a good set of results and that may ultimately swing it for me. I have at least four - perhaps five Mac options available currently ...
The Lasersaur setup, the LAOS setup (I'm on the beta test, but haven't built mine yet - it needs an mbed), DeskCNC, the LO DSP - there's also Visicut which I haven't looked into yet, but it is multi OS. Retina engrave is out as my gear ratios are completely wrong. I get a feeling that the Lasersaur setup will ramp up quickly once it is fully open sourced.

Decisions decisions

Thanks again

Neil

Installed v4.1.6 of Virtualbox on the Mac (Macbook Pro OSX 10.6.8) along with a copy of WinXP to try LaserCAD.
LaserCAD seems to work fine - can't find any bugs during the hour I played with it. Of course, I can't connect to the board as I don't have one but it makes all the right noises in the dialogs. (BTW, what's the password - not ph123).

Out of interest, I couldn't find a way to offset the data by the beam radius (as you would with a mechanical tool radius) ??

One glaring omission was it's inability to import *.SVG files - I know I can run other apps to convert them, but that's not the point - just another unnecessary step in the process - there seems to be plenty of support for some other oddball file formats !

Cheers

Neil

iGull wrote:Installed v4.1.6 of Virtualbox on the Mac (Macbook Pro OSX 10.6.8) along with a copy of WinXP to try LaserCAD.
LaserCAD seems to work fine - can't find any bugs during the hour I played with it. Of course, I can't connect to the board as I don't have one but it makes all the right noises in the dialogs. (BTW, what's the password - not ph123).

Out of interest, I couldn't find a way to offset the data by the beam radius (as you would with a mechanical tool radius) ??

One glaring omission was it's inability to import *.SVG files - I know I can run other apps to convert them, but that's not the point - just another unnecessary step in the process - there seems to be plenty of support for some other oddball file formats !

Cheers

Neil

Password is "608" ( no quotes, just numbers).

I do my kerf compensation in CorelDraw with its contour function. The older version (PHCad) has a contour function, but is not suitable for this.

Since Corel is the most popular laser design software, and it imports SVGs, probably nobody has ever asked for it.