Roadmap for raster clustering

rabbit

Hi,
Are there any plans when raster clustering will be implemented?
I have a fairly big CO2 laser with duet3 (sbc). Now I have the issue that greyscale engraving is overloading the raspberry pi.
Best,

T3P3Tony

@rabbit Its on our list to consider (and has been for a while) I can't put a target release on it yet.

o_lampe

@rabbit
I'm using a Raspberry 400 with 4GB Ram on my CO2 laser. I'm using Meerk40t software which is capable of writing a gcode file. I guess, it's much easier to send only gcode lines instead of calculating everything on the fly and send it over?

It also has an option to run from PC and send life data to a remote server on the Pi. That's probably the smartest way.

droftarts

@o_lampe raster clustering is described here https://forum.cohesion3d.com/t/improved-raster-speed-firmware-update-for-cohesion3d-boards/850/8
It's calculated in the laser GCode generation software, and sent to the laser controller in a longer form of G1 command. This allows the controller firmware to use more of it's GCode buffer for look ahead, rather than a lot of individual G1 commands. It's most useful for laser engraving/rastering, rather than cutting.

From this post, later in the thread https://forum.cohesion3d.com/t/improved-raster-speed-firmware-update-for-cohesion3d-boards/850/13:

The simple explanation is that you send one G1 move and send one or more S values, separated by colons, to be evenly distributed along the G1 move, like this:
G1 X0.5 S1:0:0.5:0.75:0:0.2

From what I understand, it's implemented in Lightburn (software developer @LightBurn is also on the forum here), not sure about other laser control/gcode generation software.

Ian

dc42

@o_lampe I've added this to the work list for RRF 3.5.