[sudo-discuss] Laser gantry, oh gantry, where art thou drivers?

Hi all, The full spectrum laser cutter I brought to the hacker pace has been out of service for some time, after Brendon's attempt to fix its loose keyswitch ended in board-popping disaster. (Shit happens, **but ermehgawd always remove power before fixing circuits guize**) Anyway, I bought some new stepper motor drivers to replace the burnt ones on the controller, but unfortunately there seems to be more wrecked with it than just that simple fix. I'd love to get this thing working for the community, though, that's a bit hard with no brains for the machine. A new board from full spectrum is $1500, but I contacted them with a "we're a poor hackerspace" card and they'd be willing to replace it for $250 if I mail in the old controller, which I feel is within raise-able reach. This would give us full access to their software suite / print driver, and a reliable machine. The other option, suggested by rayc is to use an arduino, stepper controllers and a g-code generating toolchain to run the machine. While I don't see any reason why that couldn't work, I feel like that might be a bit awkward for people who wish to use the cutter, and further makes the guide I wrote kind of useless. http://hack.rit.edu/tools/full-spectrum-laser-cutter/ As a community, what do y'all believe is best? Cheers, -Adam --- Aperture Systems: Redefining Radiography - http://aperture.systems/ http://adammunich.com/ - Cell: +1-650-452-0554 Be • knowledgeable • social • patient • fearless • compassionate • fun • humble • forgiving. Be a leader