Purchased a laser engraver / cuttuer machine

Dear Sirs,
I purchased a new laser engraver machine recently. It is a PLT 6040 machine with an 80watt laser beam and a working are of x = 400, y = 600 and z = 200 (all in mm).
How do I transfer the Rhino 6 file to the machine?
I know I could save it as a DXF or DWG file, import it into Coral Draw 2021, change it to a CDR file and transfer the file by way of Corel LASER.
This, however, is a very tedious and cumbersome method of doing things… so maybe there is a quicker time saving method using Rhino 6.
Thank you in advance, kind regards,
Pieter de Necker.
www.p-propeller.co.za

Why you just write GCode in Rhino and directly run it from Grasshopper? Also there are commercial plugins like RhinoCam, but I believe it is easy problem for 2 or 3 axis machines

usually a laser engraver/cutter should take a variety of input data. i think even illustrator files are/where standard at some machine i worked.

Dear Sirs, Thank you for the suggestions. Coral draw 2021 is the “boss” of this laser, ok? So, with CORAL DRAW comes CORAL LASER, a separate plug in that reads the following files: .AI, .CDR, .CDT, ,CGM, .CMX, .CSI, .DES, .DXF, .DWG, .EMF, .FMV, .GEM, .PAT, .PDF, .PCT, .PLT, .SVG, .SVGZ, .WMF, and last , . WPG.
Should I then use .DXF or .DWG?
A stupid question I know, but for lack of file transfer knowledge - lol.
Kind regards,
Piet de Necker

I use .dxf out of Rhino into Vcarve desktop for my router. Seems to work OK.
In this case Vcarve generates the Mach 3 G-code for the router, but the basic lines that go into Vcarve are the ones it needs to do the job. I would assume that if COREL LASER reads the .dxf it should be getting what it needs.

Can’t you just try it out and see what happens?

As far as a quicker, one step way, I doubt there is one. On the other hand it doesn’t take but a minute or less to do it via the .dxf file.

I see from your list that COREL LASER reads a number of file formats that Rhino can output, so if you don’t get what you want from .dxf you can try the others.

I can assure you that when I got my router it took some fiddling to discover what worked for me. I see from your website that you have a pretty boss router yourself so you can’t be a rank amateur at this kind of thing. :slightly_smiling_face:

Well, many of the lasers in this “consumer” category work with a printer driver - although the PLT-6040 looks like a rather inexpensive large public machine, so maybe not. The laser people often specify CorelDraw as necessary software, but this is often because they don’t know anything else. Most often the laser is being run through HPGL.

With out Epilog laser we had for example the service people only wanted to work with Corel, but we were able to run it directly out of Rhino because the laser driver installs as a printer and can actually be used by any program that can output 2D vector graphics (i.e. Rhino but also Illustrator, AutoCAD etc.). You might want to check on that.

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Thank you so much!! I shall fiddle about and if I do not come right will be here, once again, begging for advice - lol

WOW, thank you!! There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Is there ANY way you can see your way clear to guide me step-by-step tthrough this process?
Kind regards,Pieter de Necker
PS: The reason I am asking is because at age 68 I seem to struggle more with high tech, than 40 years ago - lol

Eish, this is beyond my brains capacity… lol

The first thing to do is look under Windows>Devices and Printers to see if there is a printer driver that is installed for your laser… Or simply draw a rectangle in Rhino, hit Print and look in the list of available printers and see if there is a laser driver listed.

Here is some information we put together for Epilog: Using Rhino with Epilog Laser Cutters [McNeel Wiki]

Pieter_De_Necker
I use Rhino for my laser/ engraver. CNC machines, routers, 3d printers and lasers all use some kind of intermediate process to “tell” the machine how to move. Most lasers are pretty simple 2 axis machines. Your standard printer is also a 2 axis machine. The head of the printer moves back and forth( 1st axis), the paper is moved or advanced as well( 2nd axis). Then the printer spit out a drop of ink as these two axis move. The accumulation of drops of ink appears as printed letters to us. In the raster mode, a laser does almost the exact thing, with the difference being instead of spitting out ink it turns the laser light on. My laser has one more mode,Vector mode. In vector mode the lens follows a curve, while the laser light is on. Vector mode is used to cut through the material. By the way, the Z axis of the laser is set manually before you begin “lasering”. So I think more accurately, the laser is a 2 1/2 axis machine.
My laser shows up as another printer on my computers control panel, right next to the HP printer. I “print” to my laser directly from Rhino. The power and speed of the laser is controlled by colors. It can be frustrating and time consuming to figure this all out from scratch. I call it brute force learning, bang your head against the problem until some changes, until a crack appears. And keep at it. Hope this helps>
Bill

Thank you ever so much doer the advice! I will follow up!!:+1::+1:

Thank you so much for the advice…:+1::sunglasses:

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