[viroy]

Hello all,
I am making a laser engraver and need a little help with software. I have made the engraver with ULN2003 chips, it currently works fine but just for simple shapes. The software im using is very basic and was written by a friend, it just does simple directions so isnt usefull for very much.

i would like to be able to engrave images and such but do not have any software able to do this. I did get photograv but i noticed that i cannot assign parallel port pins.
the way the controller works is there are 4 pins that control the X axis and 4 pins that control the Y axis, the laser is turned on and off by hand.

I would like to get software that will do photos and allow me to assign pins since this is a homemade controller.

can someone please help me with this?

[viroy]

also, i would like for the software to control the laser turning on and off.

[rayscott]

I have been through the same process of "How to control my mill" .. I made my own controller.. interfaced to the parallel port.. used MACH3.. and it worked fine. I had some problems with the fact that the pin signals got inverted, but I figured it out on the oscope. The best thing I could have done was to just buy the darn opto-interface board from ebay.. paid for the license from MACH3.. Trust me.. It would save a lot of headache. Yes.. Mach3 will control the laser, plasma, mill, lathe.. and all the configuration files are out there. If you are smart enough to build your own interface board, then you can do MACH3 with no problem. PS.. Most all machine in the hobby level use 2 pins for each motor.. step and direction.

Ray Scott