Img2gco
Problem Statement
I got a 2W blue laser and I zip tied it to my 3D printer to cut simple shapes out of paper and cardstock. I attempted to find rasterization programs for image etching but I could not find anything worth using. I decided to write my own program because it seemed somewhat trivial yet also, well, lasers!
Link
The script can be acessed at the following link: http://www.nebarnix.com/img2gco/ Jpeg, gif or PNG images can be used and they do not require conversion to grayscale (that happens inside with the magic and stuff). I am not quite sure what happens if you feed it grayscale images. Also, depending on your machine's axes the image may or may not need flipped or rotated. At some point I will implement this but for now you should make a small 10mm test and see for yourself.
TODO
Lots of stuff to do, but it would be nice to have:
- Bidirectional mode
- flip images with tic boxes
- generate a power calibration script and greyscale boxes.
- Stationary Dot-matrix mode with variable power pulses instead of traveling lines. Newsprinty-halftony-thingy.
Implemented:
- Skip over (but don't violate overscan distance) large white areas.
- This has been implemented for borders only, the algorithm looks for the first pixel below the white level N and the last pixel below the white level N. N default is 253. This will NOT skip white areas surrounded to the sides by non-white areas. This also serves to skip entire rows of white, saving a lot of time!
Solidoodle 3 2W Blue Laser Results
Etching paper has proved pointless, as the difference between a mark and a full through burn is incredibly small. However, balsa wood has proven to work extremely well and the results have been most satisfying!
