| Author: | Brandon Edens |
|---|---|
| Date: | 2010-03-16 |
Table of Contents
First open a web browser and surf to the page: http://localhost:631/ which is the configuration page for CUPS. The image below shows the default page you should be greeted with.
To setup a print queue you have to access the CUPS administrative page by clicking on the text that reads "Administrator". Upon clicking that you should be greeted with the following page.
To access the administrative facilities you're going to have to provide a username and password as shown in the following image.
The username to log in is "root". root is the super user for your *nix based machine be it Mac OSX, Ubuntu GNU/Linux, etc... The password for the root user might not be known to you. Oftentimes in modern Operating System installs the root user's password is scrambled to protect the machine from possibly security compromise.
However, try to login as root using the same password as what you use to login to your own account. If that fails to work then you'll need to reset the root password. Details for doing that are contained in the section Setting root's password.
We proceed with adding a printer to cups as shown in the next screenshot.
To add a laser cutter click the radio button that reads "Laser Cutter (thin red lines vector cut)" as shown in the next screenshot.
Now you will be prompted for the connection type. This portion of the setup is critical as the text you type here controls how the laser cutter behaves when jobs are printed to this queue. A basic laser cutter setup string is shown below.
What you see in the above screenshot is the following string:
laser-cutter://epilog_mini/rp=100/rs=100/vp=100/vs=10/vf=5000/rm=grey/af=1
In our lab the laser cutter's address on the network is bound to the hostname epilog_mini which coincides with IP address 192.168.254.4. Therefore specifying 192.168.254.4 rather than epilog_mini would have worked equally well making our settings string:
laser-cutter://192.168.254.4/rp=100/rs=100/vp=100/vs=10/vf=5000/rm=grey/af=1
Now let's discuss the rest of the string which includes settings for the cutter. You'll note that all instructions are in a key/value form like:
some_letters=some_value
where some_letters are something like "rp" or "rs" and some value is a number like 100 or some text. Each of these keys represent a setting for the cutter and the value is some number that is dependent upon that setting.
Here is a chart showing the available laser cutter settings.
| laser cutter setting | description | key code | range of setting |
|---|---|---|---|
| raster power | The power of the laser during raster pass. Power of 0 disables raster pass. | rp or raster-power | 0 - 100 |
| raster speed | The speed of the laser during raster pass. | rs or raster-speed | 0 - 100 |
| vector power | The power of the laser during the vector cutting pass. Power of 0 disables vector pass. | vp or vector-power | 0 - 100 |
| vector speed | The speed of the laser during the vector cutting pass. | vs or vector-speed | 0 - 100 |
| vector frequency | The frequency by which the laser turns on and off per a second (Hz) during vector cutting pass. Low values can be used to create perforated lines. | vf or vector-frequency | 0 - 5000 |
| bed width (in pts) | The width of the laser cutter bed in pts (72 pts per inch). | w or width | 1728 |
| bed height (in pts) | The height of the laser cutter bed in pts (72 pts per inch). | h or height | 864 |
| screen | Screen setting which affects mono raster mode. This affects half-toning via postscript. | sc or screen | -10, 6, 5 |
| rotation (degrees) | Number of degrees to rotate output job. | rot or rotate | -90 (counter clockwise), 90 (clockwise), 180 |
| resolution (dpi) | Resolution of the raster. | r or resolution | 75, 300, 600, 1200 |
| auto focus | Whether to enable/disable auto focus. | af or auto-focus | 0, 1 (for false / true respectively) |
| debug | Whether or not to output debug files for each stage in process which are stored in the /tmp/ directory. | debug | existence of key enables debug |
| flip | Whether to flip the raster image along the x axis. | f or flip | existence of key enables flip |
| raster mode | The raster mode which is one of mono, grey, or color. Mono is either on or off of laser. Grey is power of laser fluctuates along greyscale of image. Color is laser power dependent upon what color in image. | rm or raster-mode | mono, grey, color |
So setting up a queue for matteboard might involve a string such as:
laser-cutter://192.168.254.4/r=300/rp=45/rs=100/vp=50/vs=30/vf=10/rm=grey/af=1
which would set resolution to 300 dpi, raster power 45, raster speed 100, vector power 50, vector speed 30, vector frequency 10, raster mode = grey, and auto focus is enabled. The most interesting setting here is vector frequency set to 10 which means that the laser is going to cut on and off 10 times per a second.
Following setting the queue's options we name the printer, add a description, and specify the location of the printer. The name of the printer and description is critical towards making sure that users know what type of queue they are printing to. For the queue we're setting up we specified that this queue is intended to be used for 2 inch wood. When users search the network for other print queues the name and description play a critical role towards directing print jobs to a queue that matches the correct material in the laser cutter.
When specifying the make of the laser cutter, choose "Raw". Raw will allow the software sending the print job to decide for itself how to send the job. In the case of Inkscape the job will be sent to the laser cutter in .pdf form.
Because the Make was chosen as "Raw" we choose the "Raw Queue" for the printer model type.
Do not change any of the default options.
Now you should be presented with a setup completed screen. You now have a print queue for cutting 2 inch wood.
Now you can verify that the settings you created by checking your available print queues in the gnome print manager.
Viewing the properties of the queue shows similar information to what was set via CUPS.
Congratulations, you have now setup a print queue for printing to 2 inch wood for your laser cutter.
To add a vinyl cutter click the radio button that reads "Vinyl Cutter (thin red lines vector cut)" as shown in the next screenshot.
If your vinyl cutter is attached via a USB/serial device specify the connection to the vinyl cutter similar to the image shown in the following screenshot.
which is:
vinyl-cutter://ttyUSB0/
If your vinyl cutter is attached via a serial to network converted like ours is then specify the settings for the vinyl cutter similar to the following screenshot.
which is:
vinyl-cutter://192.168.254.6:9100/
for the device with IP address 192.168.254.6 listening on port 6001.
Now you need to specify the name and description. Here again its important to choose a reasonable name for the vinyl cutter especially if you will be sharing this print queue with others.
Now we setup the make for the vinyl cutter. In our lab we own the Epilog Camm-1 vinyl cutter. The cups fab software installs a postscript printer definition (ppd) which defines our vinyl cutter and forces software sending jobs to it to send them as postscript jobs. In the screenshot below you'll note that Roland was chosen as the make for the printer.
Now choose the cooresponding model Camm-1.
Now set the default layout for pages sent to the vinyl cutter. Please note that this is nothing more than an aesthetic setting at the moment but might contain meaning later.
Finally you are presented with the printer settings page.
Congratulations you have properly setup a vinyl cutter that is printable via standard software such as Inkscape.
Probably the easiest way to reset root's password is to just use a terminal to switch to the root user then execute the passwd command to reset root's password.
First you'll have to open a terminal. In Ubuntu this is done through Clicking the following items: Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal Under Mac OSX you open your Finder, choose Applications, then Utilities, then Terminal.
A screenshot of a typical terminal is shown below.
Now we use the sudo command to switch user to root. To do this type something like:
sudo su -
which will use sudo to execute the command su - which will switch user to root. A screenshot of the output is shown below.
Now type the password you use to login to the machine. If you do not know the password that you use to log into the machine then we cannot proceed and you should consult someone else as to what your password might be. I suggest trying to guess the password.
After switching to the root user you should see a screen like the following. The key to knowing whether or not you are acting as the root user under the BASH shell (the shell used by the terminal) is to look at the line and note the trailing "#" character at the end of the line.
Now you need to use the password command to set root's password. To do this type the command:
passwd
You should then see a screen similar to the following.
You are now required to type your new root password twice. Type the password once, then press enter. Now type it again and press enter. If you fail to type the password the same both times then you will receive a failure message. Otherwise you will be presented with a successful message as shown in the following screenshot.
Now that we have set the root password. Please return to the cups webpage and try to authenticate using root and the password you chose.
| material | Vector Cutting Speed/Power/Frequency |
|---|---|
| wood cherry - alder - walnut | 1/8" (3mm) - 30/100/500 1/4" (6.4mm) - 7/100/500 (multiple passes may allow cutting of thicker materials) |
| acrylic | 1/8" (3mm) - 12/100/5000 1/4" (6.4mm) - 4/100/5000 (multiple passes may allow cutting of thicker materials) |
| corian or avonite | 1/8" (3mm) - 20/100/5000 |
| delrin seals | 60/100/500 |
| laserable plastic | 20/60/5000 |
| leather | 1/8" (3mm) - 35/50/500 |
| mat board | 30/50/500 |
| rubber and rubber stamps | 15/100/100 |
| material | 300 DPI Speed/Power | 400 DPI Speed/Power | 600 DPI Speed/Power |
|---|---|---|---|
| wood cherry - alder - walnut | 30/100 | 35/100 | 40/100 |
| acrylic | 100/75 | 100/65 | 100/55 |
| anodized aluminum | 100/100 | 100/90 | 100/80 |
| brass-painted | 100/65 | 100/55 | 100/45 |
| marbleized painted brass | 100/75 | 100/65 | 100/55 |
| corian or avonite | 20/100 | 25/100 | 30/100 |
| delrin seals | 100/70 | 100/60 | 100/50 |
| glass | 25/100 | 30/100 | 35/100 |
| laserable plastic | 100/80 | 100/70 | 100/60 |
| leather | 100/65 | 100/55 | 100/45 |
| marble | 15/100 | 20/100 | 25/100 |
| mat board | 100/65 | 100/55 | 100/45 |
| melamine | 40/100 | 50/100 | 60/100 |
| stainless steel w/ cerdec coat | 15/100 | 20/100 | 25/100 |
| rubber and rubber stamps | 10/100 | 20/100 | 30/100 |
Please report software bugs to Brandon Edens at [email protected].
The most recent version of this software can be found at: http://mtm.cba.mit.edu/cups/
One well known and nasty bug occurs with Inkscape > 0.47. It seems that Inkscape automatically puts documents into landscape mode when the document width is greater than the document's height.
During printing Inkscape sends the document to Cairo which generates the PDF that is then ultimately passed on to the printer. The problem here is that Cairo does not properly pass the Landscape mode information off to the print server so what happens is that documents arrive in the cups backends rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise.
There exists no method of automatically correcting for this behavior at this time. When using the vinyl cutter please make sure that the document's height is greater than the document's width to force the document to be sent in portrait mode.
When using the laser cutter, either specify that the output should be rotated 90 degrees (clockwise).
The laser cutter software currently lacks an equivalent level of debugging information that is present in the vinyl-cutter software. Part of this is due to the current transition of the laser-cutter software from the version written in C to the Python version. In addition the C version of the software emits Bitmaps for the raster images which can be rather large (24 in by 12 in) with no compression.