Suggestion/Feature Request: Laser Support

[nhansendev]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is currently no support for lasers. This seems like a relatively easy addition if we assume only laser cutting is desired. The main parameters are speed and power, though additions like a starting dwell time (for laser turn-on time and punching through thicker materials) can be helpful.

Additionally, I noticed while playing with the tools that you can define a zero depth per cut (appropriate for a laser), but this freezes the program when generating the simulation. I assume that it's trying to create a very large number of passes while somehow avoiding a divide-by-zero error.

[panzergame]

Hello, thanks a lot for your support.

I fixed the infinite depth bug in this commit (f7ff0f1) as well as adding a laser option for a tool configuration, when enabled retract depth and depth per cut are ignored in final gcode.
I'm currently having issue with my CI and a release is not yet available, though you can compile from source if you want to give it a try.

Concerning dwell, did you try putting it on the same line as the pre cut command ? Will this dwell duration vary ?

[nhansendev]

Concerning dwell, did you try putting it on the same line as the pre cut command ? Will this dwell duration vary ?

I didn't try playing with dwell. Typically, if a dwell is added for laser turn-on time or punching through material it would be a constant duration (assuming material thickness is constant, which is reasonable).

[panzergame]

I recently played around with laser cutting and i used dwell by modifying the pre cut gcode line:
M4 S {S:.3f} G04 P1

Did you try it ?