Laser Cutter Technical Info Links
From AS220Labs
Epilog CUPS Driver: A custom Epilog laser cutter driver for use with CUPS (Common Unix Printing System). Allows you to print directly to the laser cutter from any program that generates clean Postscript (like Inkscape). Works great!
Epilog Technical Library: Lots of great stuff on cleaning vector grid, engraving textiles, plus lots of stuff about the Epilog driver and Corel Draw that doesn't apply to us.
A Quick Guide to Inkscape: A nice concise tutorial on using Inkscape. Parallels with Illustrator.
Creating Surface Mount Solder Stencils on the Laser Cutter
How to install printing to the epilog laser cutter from ubuntu
from Nadya Peeks' Infosyncratic wiki
Get the latest Epilog CUPs source from: as220.org/git/gitweb/
tar -xvzf cups-epilog.tar.gz cd cups-epilog/src sudo apt-get install libcups2-dev gcc -o epilog `cups-config --cflags` cups-epilog.c `cups-config --libs` sudo mv epilog /usr/lib/cups/backend/ sudo chown root:root /usr/lib/cups/backend/epilog sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
localhost:631/admin
add printer
name the printer something that has to do with the material you are cutting
choose device epilog laser
device uri: epilog://10.100.0.2/Legend/vs=7/vp=100/r=600/
where:
* af Auto focus (0=no, 1=yes) * r Resolution 75-1200 * rs Raster speed 1-100 * rp Raster power 0-100 * vs Vector speed 1-100 * vp Vector power 1-100 * vf Vector frequency 10-5000 * sc Photograph screen size in pizels, 0=threshold, +ve=line, -ve=spot, used * in mono mode, default 8. * rm Raster mode mono/grey/colour
(find out your laser cutters ip)
make/manufacturer raw
model/driver raw
make rgb postscript (.ps) files with only red (ff0000) and vectors that are .25 px wide
send to machine: lpr -P laser-cardboard-vector drawing.ps
How to find your laser's IP
The laser wouldn't accept network jobs, though it would respond to pings and would accept the first few kilobytes of a job, until I unplugged its USB cable.
The epilog laser listens on port 515 and maybe also on port 'doom.' Pressing both 'pointer' and 'go' on the laser front panel (with my 35W 12x24 laser) enters a configuration menu, one setting is for the laser IP. My IP was 192.168.50.101. You'll have to modify the examples below if your laser ip is different.
This nmap command, if run with the right laser IP and a clear route to the laser, should show two open ports:
nmap -sT -v -T Aggressive 192.168.50.101
You can watch the network traffic going from your local machine to the laser with tcpdump! It's fun!
tcpdump -i eth0 -v host 192.168.50.101
