Sorry for the questions but I have spent over a week googling and reading JPhotonics pages and still confused how it works.

I have ordered a 1W blue laser+housing to use as my trial laser and understand that I should connect it to D9 via a Lm317 module and use inkscape to generate the gcode (I have the latest inkscape with the jphotonics gcode tool installed)
I still feel confused on it operation.
Does the generator set the tool height or do I need to alter the file after to do this?

(Sorry for the silly question but I'm just not understand generating 2D code.)

You don't say how you are going to generate your code but there should be a spot to enter your startup code .
You would add the instructions to go to the z height you used to set your focus to your startup code .

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george4657
You don't say how you are going to generate your code but there should be a spot to enter your startup code .

Thank you for taking the time to answer.
I did post that that I'm using inkscape +photonics extension, but not that i'm using the latest marlin firmware.

Quote
(I have the latest inkscape with the jphotonics gcode tool installed)

Quote
george4657
You would add the instructions to go to the z height you used to set your focus to your startup code .

Is that worked out the same as the z offset used for 3d printing?

Sorry, really not finding the answers to these question and feeling very noobish.

Sorry I did not know photonics extension generated gcode.
I downloaded extension and ran it to see how it works. Its clever code but is lacking in adjusting for different machines as there is no menu item to add startup or post code.
Solutions are:

- Load your files into an editor and insert code at the start.

- Change your firmware with offsets. This would be a problem if you use machine for 3d printing as well.

- change code to add menu item. I did this but had a bug in the code so I looked for a simpler way
I will work on to add menu item>

- Simple method was to open extension laser.py (in C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions)
at LIne 86 current code
defaults = {
'header': """
G90
""",
'footer': """G1 X0 Y0
M18
"""
}

added line "G01 Z5.33 F2000" after G90

changed to"
defaults = {
'header': """
G90
G01 Z5.33 F2000
""",
'footer': """G1 X0 Y0
M18
"""
}

In my experience I would home Z manually then adjust height as needed (Variable material thickness)

do that before you run the job

Regards