The App is updated frequently. My description here may be outdated. The latest version at the time of writing this article was v3.63
Controlling the engraver is done via LaserPecker App in your smartphone/tablet over Bluetooth. The official desktop client is due to be released in 2021.
Don't be put off by the low rating of the App in Play Store or App Store. People leave bad ratings when they encounter bugs but never update their ratings when the bugs are fixed.
To Android users, the App requires Location Permission because Google made it that way, not that LaserPecker wants to know where you are. For your reference, read this Android development documentation here. To summarise, it's because by allowing an App to perform a Bluetooth scan, it can potentially identify your location. To force-make users aware of this risk, any App that needs to scan for BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) devices is forced to request Location Permission. This is different to manually doing a Bluetooth scan in your phone's Bluetooth settings.
Most people don't realise that, once an engraving job is started, it is OK to quit the app or move your phone out of Bluetooth range. You will lose the timer and progress info, (L1/Pro only: also unable to carry on multi-pass engraving if you chose to engrave more than 1 pass,) but you are free to walk away with your phone/tablet while waiting for the engraving to finish.
Without the app, you can pause/resume an ongoing job by tapping on the circle button on the back of your L1/Pro or the Play button on the back of your LP2. Hold that button to cancel the job.
Only required during initial registration.
The initial registration process works as below:
- Enter your email address and get a verification code sent to it. At the same time, the code is sent to the app in the background to be verified against.
- Wait for the verification email. Check your Spam/Junk folder. Do not repeatedly click on "Send Code" button in the app. You will end up getting multiple verification emails, but only the last one is valid. So it does not decrease your wait time but make it worse.
- Once you get the verification code and set your safety PIN, the safety PIN is stored in the engraver.
- When you use your engraver with a fresh install of the LP app, you only need to verify the safety PIN at the bottom of the registration page (look carefully). There's no need to reregister unless you want to set a new safety PIN.
If you transfer your device to a different user, you do not need to disclose your safety PIN unless you want to. The new user can go through the registration process like you did and overwrite the safety PIN.
I'll omit some obvious ones.
- On: During preview, the laser will trace the actual paths of the graphic. For example, a star.
- Off: During preview, the laser will trace the rectangle that can contain the graphic. This is same as the preview in Bin, Gray and other modes.
This option can only be enabled when a 3rd axis is connected to an LP2.
To use the 3rd axis addon for engraving, you must enable it in app settings and select a desired mode.
- Resolution (LP2 only): 1k, 1.3k or 2k. It means the number of dots or pixels per 100mm. So these settings can translate to 10px/mm (254dpi), 13px/mm (330dpi) or 20px/mm (508dpi).
- Power: 1% to 100%. Higher power means higher engraving temperature.
- Depth: 1% to 100%. Deeper means slower laser movement.
- Pass: Times of engraving. Sometimes low power multi-pass works better than high power single-pass.
Below are my own ways of writing down engraving settings concisely.
For L1/Pro, I write (100,50) for Power: 100%, Depth: 50%, 1-pass; (90,80)x2 for Power: 90%, Depth: 80%, 2-pass.
For LP2, it's important to note the resolution, too. So I write (1,100,50,1) for Resolution: 1k, Power: 100%, Depth: 50%, 1-pass; (2,80,20,2) for Resolution: 2k, Power: 80%, Depth: 20%, 2-pass; and finally (G,20,1,5) for Gcode mode (does not have a resolution option, defaults to 2k), Power: 20%, Depth: 1%, 5-pass.
There are 5 modes for image processing:
Converts image to pencil sketch style via edge detection. The converted image is black & white.
Converts image to vector paths via edge detection, mainly used for cutting or tracing the outlines of patterns. You can add different levels of line-fill in the dark/solid areas of the original image byt sliding the slider dot to the right. Moving to the very right end will give you 100% solid fill. It is not necessarily faster than directly using Bin mode, depending on the complexity of your image.
Try it out to see what works better for you. Note that with L1/Pro, Gcode mode is secretly about 2x powerful than other modes suing the same setting. For example, I found that Gcode mode with (70,30) setting produces about the same result as Bin mode with (100,70) setting. So potentially, you can lower the depth in Gcode mode to speed up your job.
Binary, i.e. black & white mode. It converts your image to black and white for engraving. Move the slider to adjust the conversion threshold.
Converts your image to grayscale, and therefore to different levels of power settings per laser pulse. Your image may look nice in the App, but the engraving result is most likely not as good as you expect. Choice of material is very very very important. MDF boards and thick brown paper are pretty good for this. Try it out for yourself. Be warned that engraving gray scale image is very slow compared to other modes, as every pixel is engraved with varying power settings.
Don't be disappointed if your result misses half of the details. Think of it this way, imagine all the gray pixels in your image are converted to different power levels according to their brightness, let's say from level 1 to level 10, to achieve 10 levels of brightness of burns, in theory. However, in reality your material does not get burnt up to power level 5; and it gets burnt equally dark from level 9 to 10. So all the pixels that are meant to be burnt with power level 1 to 5 won't show. And all the pixels burnt with power 9 and 10 become indistinguishable. As a result, the 10-level grayscale image becomes 4-level only (level 6, 7, 8, 9+10). This is a common challenge in laser engraving. And the solution is to dither your image (i.e. to use different densities of black & white pixes to emulate grayscale) and use Bin mode to engrave it. See Dithering for more details.
Inverts your desired image/pattern for making stamps. To be used with photosensitive stamps.
The Creation mode is being actively developed. It now supports custom fonts. Note that if you set your texts to hollow style, they will be engraved with Gcode mode. i.e. the laser will trace each character's outline rather than scanning through line by line.
Download your .ttf font files from the Internet:
- Android: copy to
(phone storage) > laserpecker filesdirectory in your phone. - iOS: copy your font files to any Cloud drive, and Open or Export them on your iOS device. When prompted, choose Open in or Save to
FilesApp, and then save it toLaserpecker > matarialgcodedirectory (yes, the directory name is misspelt by LP).
Once the font files are in the correct directory in your phone, they will be loaded by LP app, visible in Creation > More Fonts.
If the LP app starts to crash after adding custom fonts, it means one or more font files are corrupted or imcompatible. You may move the new font files out of LP directory, and move them back in one by one and test run the LP app in between, to filter out the one(s) causing the crash.