Laser, Aspire, Mach 3 and a diy CNC

[Greolt]

When I first built my 80W CO2 laser, I used Aspire for toolpathing and Mach3 for control.

Did not stay with that for long and use a dedicated laser controller.

The original setup with Mach3 was fine for laser cutting and vector engraving. Raster engraving was more limited.

Things have probably progressed since then. Art Fennerty (Mach3 author) wrote an engraving plugin (maybe stand alone)

It worked but was not easily configurable and necessitated many steps to get a result. Laser controller is much simpler.

However being that was a while ago, I had to go back and look at my Aspire PP to remind myself how it worked.

Basically using the "PLUNGE_MOVE" and "RETRACT_MOVE" commands together with M11P1 and M10P1

Here is my PP if interested.