@Curt : Any follow-up on the laser engraving of dowels? Pics? I’ve found the hardware set-up to be simple but am working through debugging and modifying some open source gcode wrapping software to work with MPCNC and this will take a little time. Just wanted to see what you’ve worked on so we don’t duplicate efforts. I should have more free time to work on this so let me know what toolchain you’re using when you get a chance.
The setup we have is for a specific diameter of dowel but with a little time it could be turned into a roller setup. I simply unplugged my X axis and plugged in the stepper rotating the dowel normal Gcode will move left and right burning the image and when the CNC thinks it is going up (plus X) it rotated the dowel and burns the next line. We determined that the dowel my buddy needed was almost the exact diameter as the gear used to drive the belts so we did not make any scaling changes. THe image is slightly compressed but on the dowel it is not noticeable.
I will get it out in the next few days and get you some photos.
Simple but works like a dream. It would be easy to add a second dowel/rod to make a roller for larger items. Sometime when I have the free time I will work on it.
Simple dowel holder
Looks similar to some designs I’ve seen on Thingiverse. Cool. How bad is the stretching/compressing of the image due to the straight tool path?
I will print a a test box or something later on a flat surface and on the rod to measure but it was not off by much. The dowel he needed is almost the same size as the drive gear so when he did the math he laughed and said close enough.
No worries, don’t want you wasting material to draw a box. I understand the concept, the wrapping of the toolpath is done by carefully selected gearing so no software needed. A change in stock diameter would just need a gear swap then right?