Laser Operations
Laser operations are available when your machine has a laser capability enabled. They use laser power and travel speed instead of spindle speed and feed rate.
Laser vs Spindle Operations
| Spindle | Laser | |
|---|---|---|
| Cutting tool | Rotating endmill or V-bit | Focused laser beam |
| Depth control | Mechanical — tool plunges into material | Thermal — power and speed control burn depth |
| Material removal | Chips | Vaporization/burning |
| Key parameters | Feed rate, spindle RPM, depth per pass | Travel speed, laser power, number of passes |
Vector Operations
These take vector paths from the canvas:
- Laser Contour — cuts along a path with multi-pass support and tabs
- Laser Engrave — traces path centrelines for line work and text
- Laser Hatch — fills enclosed regions with parallel lines
Image Operations
These take a raster image and render it onto the stock surface:
- Laser Raster — pixel-power-modulated greyscale engraving (needs dynamic laser power)
- Laser Halftone — binary dithering for on/off-only lasers
- Laser Stippling — Voronoi-stippled point fields for a pointillist look
Creating Laser Operations
The keyboard chord Ctrl+L followed by a key creates the vector operations:
| Key | Operation |
|---|---|
| C | Laser Contour |
| E | Laser Engrave |
| H | Laser Hatch |
The image operations are created from the operation menu after loading an image.
Laser operations only appear when the current machine has laser capability enabled.