[Bryce] obtained a fiber laser engraver to use for rapid PCB prototyping last Fall. But he was soon frustrated by the limitations of the standard EzCAD software that typically comes with these and similar devices — it is proprietary, doesn’t have features aimed at PCB manufacturing, only runs on Windows, and is buggy. As one does, [Bryce] decided to ditch EzCAD and write his own tool, Balor, named after the King of the Fomorians.
The controller board in [Bryce]’s machine is a Beijing JCZ LMCV4-FIBER-M board, containing an Altera FPGA and a Cypress 8051 USB controller. So far, he hasn’t needed to dump or modify the FPGA or 8051 code. Instead, he sorted out the commands by just observing the USB operations as generated by a copy of EzCAD running know operations. A lot of these engraving systems use this control board, but [Bryce] want’s to collect data dumps from users with different boards in order to expand the library.
Balor is written in Python and provides a set of command line tools aimed at engineering applications of your engraver, although still supporting regular laser marking as well. You can download the program from the project’s GitLab repository. He’s running it on Linux, but it should work on Mac and Windows (let him know if you have any portability issues). Check out our write-up from last year about using these lasers to make PCBs. Are you using a laser engraver to make rapid prototype boards in your shop? Tell us about your setup in the comments.
Master Oscillator Power Amplifier (MOPA) [1] LASER-Fiber Engravers are expensive. Here’s a 30W desktop unenclosed MOPA-Fiber model for $3.8k USD, and that’s cheap.[2] [Bryce] uses a 20W version from LIT LASER [3] but they don’t list prices, you have to Email them.
* References:
1. Laser power scaling – MOPA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_power_scaling#MOPA
2. OMTech 30W Laser Marking Machine for Metal and More, 8×8 Inch Fiber Laser Engraver, Solid State Laser Metal Etching Machine with EzCad2 Galvo Lens Red Dot Guide 100,000 hr Laser Source (FM7979-30) $3,799.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FB8L86Y
3. LIT LASER
https://www.litlaser.com/
I’m not sure that 30W one is a MOPA. I think it’s basically the higher-power version of the one I have. The only MOPA you will get for < $4k is a bare 20-30W source from Raycus (who make some MOPAs now), e.g. the RFL-P20MX which can be had for around $3k. You could then combine it with the other commodity parts (lens, galvo scanner, control board) and with some shopping and the use of a clone controller board, you could put it all together and have your own MOPA for under $5k.
@Bryce Schroeder says: “I’m not sure that 30W one is a MOPA.” You might be right, it does seem rather inexpensive now that I look more.
This is excellent work! Tested working on a Mac.
Excellent, glad to hear it. Which laser machine do you have?
How did you end up installing it on a mac? I’d love to test this out on my mac, but I’m having troubles figuring out how to install it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Oh man – calling EZCAD buggy is doing it a favor. It’s straight up horrific most of the time. Super cool that there’s something open source out there now. Nice work.
Thank you! The project is continuing to develop rapidly. The developers of Meerk40t and I have been in contact, and I’ve also shared reverse engineering data with LightBurn who are independently working on support for these lasers, so hopefully there will soon be some good alternatives. We’re also looking for sponsorship (e.g. a MOPA laser to work with) for adding support for some more advanced machines and features like 2.5D and color engraving.
“know operations”
known operations*
It seems not working well, JCZ right now is releasing latest EZCAD on https://www.laserchina.com/download/ezcad/
Hopefully they will fix some of the bugs, but EzCAD still only works on Windows and is closed source.
what machine? how much did it cost?
These machines don’t really have model numbers unfortunately, or brand names; but the major parts do. Mine uses a Beijing Golden Orange (BJJCZ) LMCV4-FIBER-M control board and a 20W Raycus laser source. The FBLI-B-LV4 board also seems to use the same protocol.
Oh, and it cost about $2300. You can get them slightly cheaper, but not much. On the other hand, for more power and MOPA, or ultraviolet, you can easily spend over $10k if you want.
Between this and the work the Lightburn team is doing, it will be a welcome relief to have alternatives to EzCrash!
Very exciting! I’ve been wanting some more arbitrary control over the laser for some material processing experiments on my fiber laser. Also I have been playing around making some very thermally conductive PCBs with 1mm DBC AlN substrates on my 20 watt fiber laser (both removing copper and cutting shapes (which does take a bit). Hopefully I’ll have time to do a writeup on that process soon!
Light burn announced that they should have an EZcad2 alternative later this year.
Would love to see a full, feature rich alternative software package to EZcrash.
The lasers are great and cheap and well worth the money but it is the software that lets them down.
I’ve been using EZCAD3 for a little over a month now with my 60W JPT M7 MOPA 2.5D. It’s has kinks and is frustrating, but I’m not finding it as glitchy as some say. That being said, I look forward to the day Lightburn supports EZCAD3, but that’s even further down the pipeline than their EZCAD2 support. I would welcome an alternative and applaud the efforts here.
Does it use regular G-code?
If so do you have a way to use it with Fusion360 and slicer?
JC
It uses a subset of regular g-code. Basically, it is designed to be compatible with the output of FlatCAM. There are a lot of features in G-code that it doesn’t support and Z axis is just used for turning the laser on and off.
Hello, Does the software support STL files & 2.5 D engraving?
It supports a narrow subset of SVG. In particular, it does not support any SVG transforms, which some SVG software will use liberally without showing it to the user. It doesn’t support any 3D formats for 2.5D engraving, but could be adapted to that purpose
The latest EZCAD software, EZCAD3 supports STL files for relief engraving.