Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Laser for Cutting PCB Solder Paste Stencil

« on: December 20, 2009, 06:46:59 PM »

Try the link again now. I think I may have fixed the issue.

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Laser for Cutting PCB Solder Paste Stencil

« on: December 19, 2009, 04:29:29 PM »

I am using a cheap DC-K40III modified to Mach3 to cut paste stencils out of OHP TRANSPARENCY sheets.
The precision is good enough for all of my SMD boards so far. I have used this for the last few months for all of my SMD production, so my machine has already paid for itself.
There is an IMPORTANT TRICK to getting things cutting well. You MUST allow cooling time between each CUT to prevent problems.
I have achieved this by writing software to order the cuts so no consecutive cuts are within 10mm of each other.

I will make the TAP FILE software tool I created for stencil cutting available for download on my software page.

Another important trick is to apply around minus 4 thou offset to the paste mask layer BEFORE exporting it from PCB CAD to DXF to allow for beam width offset.

http://www.dockerty.co.nz/lasercutter.html

3

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Laser Engraving Plugin Source Code

« on: October 06, 2009, 11:41:09 PM »

The ENGRAVING triggering is output on the DIGITAL TRIGGER pin which you will need to assign to a pin and enable.

4

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Laser Engraving Plugin Source Code

« on: July 30, 2009, 07:14:05 PM »

Ok,

 
Here is the source for both the Engraver plugin and I also include the zlib.lib source as I also required this.

5

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Laser Engraving Plugin Source Code

« on: July 30, 2009, 05:20:24 PM »

poppabear.

The sourcecode of MY VERSION is available at www.dockerty.co.nz\Engraving.zip
and the ORIGINAL SOURCECODE is now avaliable from the MACH3 PLUGIN webpage.

Simply drop the new DLL overtop of the old one!

Hopefully you can locate the stupid errors I have made and get the additional features fully functional with there settings correctly storing to XML.
 

6

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Laser Engraving Plugin Source Code

« on: July 29, 2009, 06:22:37 AM »

The engraver plugin source code is now available for download, I was the one who requested the code be make available. As good support people they asked Art, the code owner, if it could be released and he said YES!.
I have found the most significant bug relating to the image requiring to be square to work correctly.
There are three variables in the code, length height & width, and they have been mixed up in some of the code.
I now have sone source code which works WITHOUT the image needing to be square.
I have also added a "Maintain Aspect Ratio" checkbox to keep the image the correct shape.
My only major problem is I am attempting to add an "Inverse Image" checkbox and I cannot get it to work.
I am NOT a VC++ programmer and I have had to feel my way through this code so far, normally I code in ANSI C or Codegear (borland) Pascal.

The sourcecode of my version is available at  www.dockerty.co.nz\Engraving.zip (15Mb).

This source is for Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 and includes the source for zlib.lib which I spent a few hours sorting.

I need to work out the remaining bugs and things will be sweet!!!

7

Forum suggestions and report forum problems. / Re: Laser Engraving Plugin-share experience/any documentation?

« on: July 24, 2009, 05:53:58 AM »

Thank you for the IMPORTANT CLUE about the image needing to be SQUARE to avoid those ghostly double images.
As to the problem relating to the X and Y pixel size, I think there is an error in the software which is confusing the X and Y axis. This is possibly the cause of the image raster ghosting also.