L-SOLUTION 100 Ex Fibre machine
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First contact
The printer driver of the LASER machine
This section describes how the computer controls the LASER system through the printer driver.
It defines some very important terms that you need to know in order to operate the system correctly.
How the computer controls the LASER machine
The LASER system is a unique type of output device. Let’s call it a very sophisticated printer/plotter.
A regular LASER printer is a "raster"-based output device. So is a bubble jet, ink jet, or dot matrix printer.
A plotter is a «vector» based output device.
The difference lies in the way the characters and other graphics are formed. To explain what «raster» and «vector» are,
let us use the example of trying to print the letter «T»
(diagram 1)
. A raster printer will make a back-and-forth motion
to create the character whereas a vector plotter will follow the path of the outline of the character.
Printer driver
The LASER system can actually raster the image, vector the image, or do both raster and vector motions. The LASER
systems printer driver works directly with your software program to send the correct image to the LASER system.
The LASER system is an output device just like a printer or plotter is.
Once the graphic is created on your computer system, you print the graphic the same way you would print to a LASER
printer or plot to a plotter. This information is then sent down to the LASER system through the parallel cable (or USB
cable) and is stored in the LASER systems RAM memory.
Once the file is in the memory, press the «Start» button
on the control panel to begin processing.
The only real difference between how a LASER printer or a plotter works compared to the LASER system is that the LASER
printer driver also has control on how much LASER power as well as motion system speed is applied.
If the machine is used with the engraving software LaserStyle, the GT Smartstream driver allows the data exchange
between your laser machine and LaserStyle.
