engraving letters

[Bill_5335]

Has anyone used Labview to control a 2 or 3 axis application that can engrave lettering?  Right now it looks like I will have to start from scratch to write the code for each letter.  Is there an easier way to do this?

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

Are you using an X/Y table with a Z axis cutting/milling head or an X/Y galvo scanner setup with a laser or an X/Y table with a laser?

Another approach might be a modified plotter that accepts a laser or cutting head in leiu of pen up/down. Could then just send text to it with the appropriate font selected. 

Many ways to approach this, I do not have a solution for you, but thought I might open up the possibilites.

[Bill_5335]

I am using stepper motors attached to linear slides.  The hardware is savaged from a few different sources at very low cost.  Come to think of it, this could morph into a home made CNC machine.  The CNC sites I checked make no metion of Labview.

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

Yes, I bet somewhere out there is someone who has a LV based. A former employee here wrote LV 5 code to drive an HP plotter to engrave luggage tags with a laser. He had to write all the code for his custom fonts. Unfortunately that code is no longer available, I would have offered it up.

What interface (motion control method and motor drives) do you intend to use? It sounds like you are on a budget. There may be CNC to LV translators available ($$$) but you'd still have to write G/M codes in CNC to translate to LV G 🙂

Would NI's motion assistant help at all (do not know much about it, other than more $$).

[MarcoPolo5]

I have not come accross a specific LabVIEW Program to engrave lettering, however, this is fairly common in programs that create G code.

ABM Soft makes a G code translator for NI Motion 73xx borads.

Check them out / contact them at:

http://www.abmsoft.com/?p=home

Hopefully this helps out some!