<Axis>

Fabool Laser CO2/DS employs V-Slot Linear Rail(40 x 20mm) and Delrin V Wheel from OpenBuilds for its axis. Thanks to the V-Slot, the number of parts decrease and makes the structure simple.


<Control Panel>

We adopted STM32F205 microcomputer as main CPU for the Control Panel of Fabool Laser CO2/DS. PC and STM32 are connected with USB and communicate G code in serial communication system.

In addition to the microcomputer, the lasers are equipped with 3 A4982 drivers from MicroSystems Inc. and MCP4461 digital potentiometer from Microchip Technology Inc. for setting up the power for driver. MCP4461 is set by G code in I2C connection via microcomputer. The output of the laser is controlled by STM32, and the power is adjusted by PWM.

Kicad from open-source PCB CAD software is utilized for the Control Panel development.


<Firmware>

The firmware for Fabool Laser CO2/DS is developed based on GRBL(http://bengler.no/grbl). We implemented following function on the firmware.

  • Laser Carving
  • Power Adjustment for Motor Driver
  • Switching ON/OFF of Laser Output

We adopted Eclipse and OpenOCD for the firmware development.


<Software>

Fabool Software, the software for Fabool Laser CO2/DS processing, operate on Max OS X. The software imports SVG, DXF and other image datas and control processing by sending G code to the Control Panel of Fabool Laser CO2/DS. SVG and DXF are processed along the outward form (vector processing), and image data is processed by horizontally scanning like as the whole data is filled and plastered ( raster processing ).

The programming language is C++, and the library is Qt5. The development environment is Qt Creator.