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Learn/Laser/Machine & setup

Machine profiles

At a glance

  • Laser-specific profiles with travel limits, units, simplify tolerance, and feed timebase (per minute or per second in the UI)
  • Profile type drives which post processors appear—keep machines centralized across workspaces
  • Bed dimensions update live when you edit travel from the shared machine manager

Laser machines live in the same centralized Machines... dialog as every other JetCad3 machine type — open it from the Edit menu or the Machine section of the Laser browser panel. The Laser workspace filters the list to laser-type profiles, and Machine → General → Type is authoritative: it decides which post processors appear under Machine → Post and which configuration sections are shown. Each workspace remembers its own active machine.

General settings

Alongside name, units (inches or millimeters), and the MCS origin corner, laser profiles add a Feedrate Timebase choice: display speeds as Units / min or Units / sec. This is purely a display preference — operation speeds are stored canonically in inches per minute, so switching timebase never changes what your machine actually runs. Simplify Tolerance controls how aggressively imported curves are simplified; new laser profiles default to a tight 0.0002 in, since lasers hold detail that a plasma profile would just smooth away.

Axes and the bed

The axis table sets travel, max velocity, and max acceleration per axis. X and Y travel define the bed drawn in the workspace, and edits sync live — change travel from Edit → Machines... and the Laser bed redraws immediately. Acceleration matters beyond simulation: the engrave overscan auto-calculation in Operation parameters reads axis acceleration to figure out how much run-up the head needs to reach full speed before the laser fires.