New domain, and boards are at the fab

Laser Converter V1.1

You may have noticed that the .blogspot part of the address is gone. We have moved to our own domain! Also, I have sent the next batch of boards out for fabrication.  I figured since I was sending out for new boards anyway, I would make a few changes.

We've sold out

Today was a big day! Chris' Circuits was featured on Hack A Day! We had a huge surge in traffic and all our laser converter boards sold out!

Looks like I will be spending the weekend at the post office.

For those who are still interested in a laser converter board, I will put up a pre-order in the products page for the next batch.

Thanks for the great response everyone. More awesome projects are in the works.

UPDATE: The pre-order is now live.

Holiday Fun!

Laser cut graham crackers

I've had a great response to my laser converter board. There are only a few more in this first batch so if you have been thinking about getting one, get one before they are gone. I plan on ordering a second batch but they may not be ready until January.

Anyway, I hope everyone is having a ton of fun with their laser cutters, I know I am. I wanted to post real quick and show everyone what I am up to.

Installing and using a CamBam post processor

Post processors are used to automate the creation of specialized gcode. In the case of a laser cutter, if you are using standard cam programs, their output is traditionally for a spindle type cutting tool. This means we need to make a few changes to how rapids and other features are treated. In a typical mill, when the tool wants to move to an X,Y point without cutting (a rapid) it typically raises up the Z moves to X,Y and lowers to cut. During the entire move the spindle stays on. In the case of a laser we need to turn off the laser, move, and then turn it on again. Our post processor makes these changes so the gcode comes out correctly for our application.

Configuring Mach3

Mach3 main screen

     I wanted to put together an easy to follow guide for configuring Mach3 to work with my converter board and other similar breakout boards. The exact pins used for each signal will vary from board to board. This example will specifically use the pin-out from the converter boards that can be purchased from my product page.