Are you using a laser engraver to make rapid prototype boards in your shop? Tell us about your setup in the comments.

Check out our write-up from last year about using these lasers to make PCBs. He’s running it on Linux, but it should work on Mac and Windows (let him know if you have any portability issues). You can download the program from the project’s GitLab repository. A lot of these engraving systems use this control board, but want’s to collect data dumps from users with different boards in order to expand the library.īalor is written in Python and provides a set of command line tools aimed at engineering applications of your engraver, although still supporting regular laser marking as well.

Instead, he sorted out the commands by just observing the USB operations as generated by a copy of EzCAD running know operations. So far, he hasn’t needed to dump or modify the FPGA or 8051 code. The controller board in ’s machine is a Beijing JCZ LMCV4-FIBER-M board, containing an Altera FPGA and a Cypress 8051 USB controller. As one does, decided to ditch EzCAD and write his own tool, Balor, named after the King of the Fomorians. But he was soon frustrated by the limitations of the standard EzCAD software that typically comes with these and similar devices - it is proprietary, doesn’t have features aimed at PCB manufacturing, only runs on Windows, and is buggy. Obtained a fiber laser engraver to use for rapid PCB prototyping last Fall.

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