I am going to ask the ultimate n00b question. Why upgrade the laserdrw/coreldraw board to smoothie with laserweb?
It boils down to what the owner or user needs. Others are perfectly fine with the original software. Others does not like the workflow of the OEM software. And the newer boards offer a lot more features.
In my case, I used mohidraw for 3 years until it died. Now I’m using lasersaur board.
Platform independence, community driven , lots of development onopen source software to easy the use ( LaserWeb ) , grayscale raster among other things
One thing I am having trouble with is that the software doesn’t seem to allow me to etch and cut on the same process and that I have to use coreldraw to create a two step process. Is this correct?
When I use the laser at school it does it by color, red for cut and black for engraving, does laserweb do that too? That would be very cool.
@Abe_Fouhy check this out
To do grayscales like this easily and to have multi operations like cutting and engraving without having to click a ton of buttons… Being able to control power with software instead of locked in to what the pot is set to
Oh man that is cool. Awesome! For $150 that looks like my next upgrade.
Or, just, Cohesion3D Mini. All in one upgrade, pops right in, $99.
This is really cool, is the importance of PWM control so the laser cools between movements? Or is more about the accuracy of the stepper step?
None of that. PWM control is so you can actually set the power of the laser, from software, on the fly. That’s how Alex gets his awesome engravings, and it’s how you can have one job with different cut parameters
Oh cool! Do you work for that cohesion3d? If so do you have instructions to install that board you coukd send me
Yeah that’s my company. Here’s the early instructions @Carl_Fisher wrote: https://www.dropbox.com/s/emw9n72b2qi97nl/C3D%20Installation.pdf?dl=0
Keep in mind there are other machine types out there, we support those too, just still working on the docs for it.
Awesome. This looks like it’ll work on my kl3020. Same machine really. This works with the laserweb or is there a different software package?
LaserWeb is what we recommend.
And laserweb is free/opensouce?
Absolutely. Peter and the team now are doing a wonderful job. It doesn’t require any keys to unlock it either 
@Abe_Fouhy laserweb is great, but more open source software exist. not trying to challenge once against other, but saying 2 is better than one and keeping the choices open. So you can also try Visicut. (several jobs at once, by colors, etc…)
Laserweb/Visicut is independant of Operating system, so it work on Mac, Linux too.
What is the lead time from order to delivered for the cohesion3d?
Looks like I will be ordering that board after all. I just cooked my OEM after working with the PS.