Laser CNC

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Laser Cutting and engraving

Life cycle:

  1. Design the 2D object (Inkscape, or any graphical editor)
  2. Export to a compatible format: Gcode or DXF
  3. Send to the laser cutter

Inkscape for Laser cutting

Good and short tutorial videos:

Notes: about Inkscape and Linux

Inkscape and Gcodetools extension

Problem1: python 2.7 vs 3 for gcodetools

  • There is an extension for Gcode export.
  • It appears to be written for Python 2, while the newest Inkscape appears to be running Python 3. There might be problems with running the extensions. Change the default version for python to be 2.7 like this:
    • Open Inkscape preferences, usually here: ~/.config/inkscape/preferences.xml
    • Search for
<group
    id="extensions"
    …
    org.ekips.filter.gears.pitch="20"
    org.ekips.filter.gears.angle="20" />
    • Change to - add the following:
<group
    id="extensions"
    python-interpreter="/usr/bin/python2.7"
    …
    org.ekips.filter.gears.pitch="20"
    org.ekips.filter.gears.angle="20" />

Problem2: unittouu

After running gcodetools extension you may get the error:

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'unittouu'

The solution is to update the gcodetools.py as follows. For me, this was on the line 5864 where inkex.unittouu() is called. The problem is that it is referenced as

doc_height = inkex.unittouu(...

Fix this as follows:

doc_height = self.unittouu(...

Inkscape extensions: JTechPhotonics

Alternative, easy to use extension for inkscape to create gcode is J Tech Laser Tool Plugin

Resources