Adding a laser to the shapeoko

For those who add a laser on,

  1. Did you ditch Carbide Motion?
  2. I assume one must turn the spindle/router switch off, and turn on/enable the laser since they are sharing the single/only output of the PCB?
  3. Are work offsets possible to avoid re-zeroing the X/Y?
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There are a lot of threads on this subject. People run a macro before and after to enable laser and disable afterwards.

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I don’t have a laser on mine, but I think the popular LightBurn software is also a GCode sender that can be used instead of GCode for laser work. My understanding is you use LightBurn to laser, and use CM to CNC.

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That’s what I do. To use an analogy, Lightburn is kind of like Carbide Create and Carbide Motion rolled into one, but for lasers.

As already mentioned most folks will use LightBurn to drive the machine for laser jobs, because that’s just more convenient.

However LightBurn is 2D (which admittedly covers 99% of laser jobs), but I found at least one case where I had to use a regular G-code sender (CM or other) to move the laser around, and that’s when lasering a curved surface. Example in this thread.

If you have a BitRunner, yes, deactivate it (or with the new BitRunner v2, just don’t activate the enable button), since both the BitRunner and the laser rely on the same PWM signal and the router would otherwise start

Yup, if you now the offset of the laser point from the router axis center, it’s a simple matter of a G-code oneliner. Or, use this method. There are a few threads about how folks deal with CNC+laser jobs.

Lightburn works fine, HOWEVER, the coordinate system on lasers is flipped into positive space vs the negative space we usually work in, so that macro actually does a little more than “enable the laser” - it actually changes coordinate systems back and forth.

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