Plot and laser cut at once

Laser and pen

In this setup I take advantage of the use of different coordinate systems to make a pop-up card.
Note: the Z-positon of the focused laser must be higher then the zero-position of the pen, otherwise the pen would still draw, when using the laser.
Drawing
Tool table
Tool setup
Grouping
Coordinate systems
Video
Settings

The drawing

Inside the drawing, laser and pen action are seperated by pen-color:

Green to use a pen
Red to use a laser, marking a folding edge 'valley fold'
Blue to use a laser, marking a folding edge 'mountain fold'
Black to use a laser for cutting

The tool table

The needed tool table 'laser_and_pen.csv' is the connection between colors and tools:

The tool table settings will be applied when generating the G-Code.

The Pen

uses the coordinate system G55 which has an offset in X direction compared to the coordinate system stored in G54 for the laser. To keep the laser off during the pen use, the spindle speed = laser PWM is set to zero.

The Laser

all laser settings uses the coordinate system G54 and a power (spindle speed) of 100. Finally one laser tool would be enough but hard to select with different colors from the drawing.

Tool setup

The next step is to select the source of parameters, note the checkbox 'from tool table':

Enable the usage of the tool table

To collect all drawing objects of same color, the grouping 'by pen-color' must be activated. To start with the pen first and doing the laser-cut at last, the groups must be sorted by tool-nr in descending order.

Setup the coordinate systems

Set G55 Pen

Send 'G55' to activate this coordinate system. Move to the desired XY-zero positon, lower the pen until it touches the paper (be sure a little dot was drawn), press 'Zero XYZ' - finish.

Attention: wear laser safety goggles!

Set G54 Laser

Send 'G54' to activate this coordinate system. Activate the laser with low energy (e.g. by using the custom button 'Laser On weak'). Move to the marked pen position and focus the laser with the Z axis (this position must be higher then the pen-zero-position!), press 'Zero XYZ' - finish.

Video

Settings

laser_and_pen.csv
laser_pen.ini

Setup values can be applied via copy & paste on the Serial-COM window of GRBL-Plotter.

$0=10
$1=25
$2=0
$3=6
$4=0
$5=1
$6=0
$10=0
$11=0.010
$12=0.002
$13=0
$20=0
$21=0
$22=1
$23=10
$24=1000.000
$25=5000.000
$26=250
$27=1.000
$30=150
$31=10
$32=1
$100=40.000
$101=40.000
$102=266.667
$110=5000.000
$111=5000.000
$112=400.000
$120=1000.000
$121=1000.000
$122=1000.000
$130=165.000
$131=170.000
$132=62.000

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