Laser Cutting through a browser app

Hi guys,

We are building a browser-based laser cutting app. If you find this interesting please share our campaign:

[www.indiegogo.com]

I am not shamelessly advertising here, we are more into seeing whether there is interest for this thing, rather than the funds.

Let me know what you think.

Even if you were shamelessly advertising, it would be OK. That is what this subforum is for!!

It looks like what you are offering is an easy-to-use in-browser 2D CAD program, geared for lasercutting, and packaged with a laser-cutting service (I guess you guys will have a shop that handles the cutting/shipping/etc). There are a lot of free drawing packages out there (Inkscape for example), and lot's of laser cutting services (Ponoko, emachineshop, etc). It seems like the question you need to answer is: what do we offer that existing drawing packages and laser cutting services don't?

From the video it looks like the interface is pretty easy... but if it's just limited to basic shapes I'm not sure how excited people will get about it. A lot of people (undergrad students especially!) use lasercutting as a means to make quick mechanical prototypes. If "mechanical prototypers" were your target market, you could add a number of features that would be very useful in that regard:

• parametric involute gears - select pitch, number of teeth, pitch diameter, etc
• parametric rack and pinion (similar to gear)
• standard features for connecting and interfacing parts (T-slots for nuts and bolts, slots and tabs, etc)
• simple cam design
• ability to plot simple equations (x-y functions, r-theta polar functions, etc)
• an intuitive way to display the cutting kerf, to help with tolerancing parts

You may also want to allow the user to pick from a standard set of material sheet sizes (12 inch X 24 inch, whatever) and then clearly show the placement of the part in relation to the sheet of material. This is handy if you want to fill up a sheet with the maximum amount of parts. You could do something like ExpressPCB except for laser cutting... just a cheap, fast way to get lasercut parts on a standard sheet size.

(As an aside, one thing I've always wanted for a laser cutter program is some kind of "scrap scanner" where you just toss whatever piece of scrap you can find into the laser cutter, then the laser cutter scans the scrap and displays an outline of it in the interface software, and then you go and drag your parts to wherever they fit in the piece of scrap... but this is kind of outside the scope of what you are proposing.)

Link says it's in "DRAFT" mode. I'm a little sad haha. I love laser-cutting and I hate seeing people hate it because of their complete Illustrator incompetence (ours prints ai.'s; I don't know about other cutters).

Quote
MattMoses

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one thing I've always wanted for a laser cutter program is some kind of "scrap scanner" where you just toss whatever piece of scrap you can find into the laser cutter, then the laser cutter scans the scrap and displays an outline of it in the interface software, and then you go and drag your parts to wherever they fit in the piece of scrap...

Me too! Or at least a tool that let's you draw around the available space and then communicates that information back to the printing setup page.

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