Nope! Keyso and Rocksolid are ~$5k. Tbh, I was really close to just buying from them, but the country I live in has very high duties!
Hello are you able to import a vector file in the RKQ software?
Yes, but their specific supported file types are pretty weird! Best bet is to convert to DWG before import
To put this thread to bed, this is unlikely to happen any time soon. I spent inordinate amount of time working on this. Short of support from the manufacturer, it ain’t happening.
The .rkq format and RK Cad are deeply intertwined. There is a possibility of sending commands straight to the board, but currently it doesn’t look that’s a good plan. The rkq files don’t just contain a simple spec and geometry, they include assigned buffers, control flows, all the geometry, the “pen” settings, the axis moves and a whole pile of other stuff.
I will still try to achieve the trivial case of marking a square , but the downright right insane complexity of setting up real-time buffers and furnishing various parts of the controling FPGA with that data would be a little easier with any documentation, but, there being none, it ain’t happening any time soon
Lol, great timing on my part!
Aaaaand it’s working. Full implementation of an rkq encoder, essentially unlimited layers. Tested with 1000., no issues.
I read the reply about “not going to be able to communicate to RKQ boards” then “Aaaaand it’s working”. Does that mean you’ve figured out how to properly communicate with the boards?
I’m primarily a software developer and my boss stuck me with “you know that CO2 galvo laser project back in 2017 using a HALaser E1803D controller that didn’t go anywhere? Well, here’s $2K to buy the cheapest UV laser you can find for another project that’s simpler”. While waiting on the UV to come, I wrote software to do what my boss wants me to do and it’s pretty easy on the CO2, but since cold-lasing is really needed by the customer, I’ve got to figure out how to control this cheapo UV. I emailed RKQ and haven’t gotten a reply yet about their SDK cost.
I suspect I’m going to have to beg to buy another HALaser controller and rewire this 5W UV sucker. BJJCZ is wanting $3,6K. BSLAPP $2,5K. In 2017 we paid $585 for the E1803D. I just would really-really-really like to not have to rewire this thing.
The approach I took was in the wider context of the software suite I’m writing. Total control of the board directly wasn’t achieved, but I could likely get there. The current implementation generates valid rkq files that can be opened with rk-cad and cut in 3d. The structure of the rkq files essentially amount to the buffers that are streamed to the board. It’s inelegant, and pretty slow, but it works as expected.
Which specific UV laser have you purchased? Does it use a rkq board? Presumably your workflow is 2d, and if that’s the case you can use RK-CAD.
RKQ’s sdk is an unknown to me, so can’t comment on the pricing. My open source board is getting there, but is far from production ready.
This is a Scotle 5W UV with the z-axis for 3D crystal engraving. It’s using a RKQ 441 control board.
I bought it as a “hey, this project is eventually going to need something like this, but I want to be able to do stuff for home. So I can use it to develop the software, then take it home while work purchases another two for the customer”. The customer project likely will involve me communicating with an additional controller as they’ll need two axises of travel(but it’s just going to be 2D marking)
The CO2 laser that has the E1803D was relatively easy. $600 and they had C++ libraries. Just wrote a C# wrapper around it and was simple to control. Since my work place is a “every penny is sacred”, I just did serial commands out the E1803D to an arduino with some motor drivers. I just wrote a super simple script to handle things like homing the axis and basic motion control with serial commands so my desktop app only had to communicate to my wrapper. That project took STL files and I would do my own slicing and generate layer images that I then used HALasers fast buffered lines. It was insane level deep engraving(11mm thick blocks). Doing something like crystal engraving isn’t exactly an alien concept for me on the low level, the only difference is doing an outline rather than the solid part.
Is your open source board going to handle any motion axises? I assume it’s going to be lightburn compatible?
I came here hoping that Lightburn supported the RKQ boards as at least for the work project I could use the UDP interface and just write out some files to load and handle things that way. Wouldn’t be pretty but if the end thing worked, the customer likely wouldn’t care what it looked like if they could it for cheap.
Architecture wise, yup. Twin ESP 32-S3 as the core; motion control handled by FluidNC. Currently, pin count remaining should be plenty for 4+ axis. A partial Lightburn compatibility is planned; intention is to present it as a JCZ board, which in the compatibility layer right now is to EZCAD2 spec, rather than EZCad 3. Need to wait for expanded axis control options within Lightburn to utilise the full number of axis. With my own software there is “n” axis control; you wanna run 8 random steppers, it’ll do it.
In terms of your situation, RK-CAD should be fine to run it without too many hoops to jump to. The import options are more limited, but dxf and .ai support are ok. Arbitrary axis moves are another step in the process; you insert them as a kinda meta-layer. Cut Vector a, next layer moves the axis relatively or absolutely, cut layer b. My solution was to generate 100s of layers in 2d with a z-axis move in between each. If the board is the 441 specifically, I think you are limited to 1 axis. RKQ will charge a pound and a crown for anything over the basic level, including their internal engraving solution, which I believe is ~1k USD.
All that to say that there isn’t an easily available off the shelf multi axis solution for more than 1 axis + galvo right now, but come it’s coming
RKCAD is a nightmare. Friday I tried creating a power grid. Every square, I hit “hatch” and then have to Alt+space, press M, and use my arrow keys to get the hatch window visible on my third monitor. Then in testing, I realized that it’s using parameters from Pen 0 on the other pen’s if the other pens are set as having a “Marking times” greater than 1. Someone trying to do cold lasing where multiple passes are likely necessary, this becomes an utter nightmare. Can’t even find a way to have different text objects use different pens. In other words, to try and even figure out what settings I’m going to need for the different materials used by the customer I can only do one mark at a time with a particular freq/width/speed/marktimes setting. The FB group about RKCAD basically had a bunch of people saying they avoid using their lasers that are forced to use it except for very explicit things(like bubblegrams). I really wish Lightburn had compatibility for those controllers.
And that’s the thing if RKQ offers even a basic SDK for a reasonable price, I can do what the customer wants. I just have to toss in the mix a separate motion controller.
As a FYI, three of the HALaser controllers that support XY2-100 also support up to 4 axis. https://halaser.eu/compare.php The one I’ve got hooked up to our CO2 is https://halaser.eu/manuals/e1803_manual.pdf Looks like the last time someone asked about HALaser/Lightburn support for their stuff was back in 2021(pre galvo support).
I already dumped a question on r/ChineseLaserCutters trying to find out how many have replaced the controllers in these machines. I’m looking forward to your board as a way to untrap all of us and allowing us to use quality software like Lightburn.
Not that it’s relevant to LightBurn. But I did end up burning out my HALaser E1803D. I had picked up the latest E1803D docs and wired based on that. Only after nothing responded did I go back and find out 9 years ago we had bought a limited edition E1803DLight version that only supported 5VDC, not up to 24VDC.
While I had a local PCB repair company looking at it. I came up with a wrapper for RKLib.dll that’s included with RK-CAD so I could directly control the LM-441 board without needing RK-CAD(just need Npcap installed, RKLib.dll and Qt5core.dll. Got to the point last Friday that the only thing I didn’t have working was moving the axis down(I could move it up just fine, wasn’t figuring out how to properly set direction. Negative values did the same moves as positive). Gah, that thing is insanely chatty.
Got the HALaser board on Wednesday afternoon and got it wired up yesterday and got to the point of cutting some rectangles and moving the axis up and down by the end of the day yesterday.
It’s sure nice to have direct control and no longer having to take over an ethernet port on my desktop. Looking forward to updates on your control board fins and as LighBurn adds additional external control where I might one day have a central API to code against which handles all the details to different systems out there.