Laser Station

Why I Built This

Setting up each piece took longer than engraving it

Marking a piece takes seconds. Getting the laser ready took minutes, every time: find the artwork in the day's Drive folder, find the font in a list, then size and place the text so it fits inside an 18 mm coin without touching the ring hole. None of it is difficult, but it has to be done carefully for every piece, all day.

A coin is only one of the items on that bench. The same machine marks name bars, hearts, rings, cuffs, bookmarks, charm necklaces, urns, dog tags and medical bars, each with its own template, default font and rules about where the text may sit. Adding an item family to the program means writing those rules down once. I did it for every family the shop sells.

The printing program already knew everything the laser needed, because it had just printed the order. So I connected the two programs: the printing program adds one QR code per engraved item to the order paper, and Laser Station reads it at the machine. Before, a person re-read the paper and entered it into the laser software. Now the code carries the order number, the item, the finish, the text and the font, with a checksum that catches a partial scan before anything is engraved.

The program does not fire the laser. It drives everything in EZcad except Mark, and it answers No to every save prompt. Someone's hand may be on the jig, so the operator presses F2 to engrave.

The problem, and what changed

Ten minutes of setup per piece, or one scan

The laser could already do all of this, and the team was already doing it correctly. The problem was the time each step took, on every piece. Below is the same job, before and after.

1 · The setup: from eight manual steps to one scan

2 · Task by task

How It Works

What happens between the scan and READY TO MARK

Laser Station is a small window that sits in the corner of the laser computer's screen. It has no file dialogs and nothing to type into. A code comes in, and either the laser is set up or the screen explains why not.

Step by step

How a person uses it

The operator scans the order paper and presses F2. Everything in between is automatic.

1. 01

   The order paper arrives with a code on it

   The printing program puts one QR code on the paper for every item that gets engraved.

   • The code carries the order number, the item code, the finish, and the text and font for each engraved face or piece
   • Below it, the same information is printed in words, so a person can read what the code says
   • An order with two engraved pieces gets two codes, in the order they are made

   How I built it: The order paper

   • Both programs read one shared payload file, so the printer and the laser use the same data
   • The code is versioned, and the reader handles every format the printing side has used
   • A three byte checksum catches a half read scan before anything is engraved

   Order paper · one piece

   Order paper · two names

2. 02

   Scan it, anywhere on the screen

   The operator points the scanner at the paper and pulls the trigger. Nothing has to be clicked first.

   • The scanner works whatever window is in front, including the laser software itself
   • A scan that is not a Laser Station code is handed straight back to whatever window was active, in order, so the scanner still works normally for everything else
   • A damaged or partial scan is caught by the checksum and asks to be scanned again

   How I built it: Scanning

   • A 2D QR scanner behaves like a keyboard, so a scan is a burst of keystrokes into whatever window has focus. At a laser that is EZcad, where stray characters land in the artwork
   • A low level Windows keyboard hook watches for the code's prefix, holds the keys while they could still be a code, and swallows them once it completes
   • Keys that turn out not to be a code are replayed into the active window in order, so normal typing still works

   

3. 03

   The program sets the laser up

   Everything the operator used to do by hand happens while they put the piece on the jig.

   • Template: the right file for that item code is opened, discarding whatever was on the canvas
   • The item decides the rest: a photo coin wants a traced portrait with the name curved along the bottom, a cuff wants one line inside the guide box the shop drew, a medical bar wants the symbol out of the template with the text centred beside it, and a birth flower ring wants a picture and no text at all
   • Artwork: the customer's black and white portrait is found on this computer and imported, on white, with its margin trimmed
   • Text: set in the font the paper names, sized and positioned so it fits the piece and clears the ring hole
   • Laser settings: speed and power are set for a dark or a light engraving; the frequency is deliberately left as the template has it

   How I built it: Setting EZcad up

   • EZcad has no scripting, so the program drives it the way Windows does, by sending messages to its own windows and panels
   • Every command waits for EZcad to finish instead of pausing for a fixed time, so a setup takes seconds
   • EZcad quirks I found and worked around: Apply stays greyed out unless the change looks like a real keystroke, and size cannot be applied in the same step as text or the letters stretch
   • Save prompts are always answered No, so a template is never overwritten

   

4. 04

   READY TO MARK, and the operator presses F2

   The green bar is the only thing the operator has to read.

   • The pet's name, the item code and the finish, so the piece on the jig can be checked against the screen in one glance
   • The marking settings being used, and which photo was chosen and from which day's folder
   • Any note worth knowing, for example "Long text: made smaller to fit"
   • Test runs a frame without firing, Log shows everything the program did, and Settings is where the folders live

   How I built it: READY TO MARK

   • A rule from reviewing the first version: clicking this window must not take keyboard focus from EZcad, because F2 is Mark
   • The window does not take focus, stays on top, and sits clear of the laser's own controls
   • A job counts as finished only when EZcad's Part counter rises on two consecutive reads while it is idle, so the next order loads only after the mark is done

   A photo coin

   A birth flower ring drawing, not a screenshot

5. 05

   An order with more than one piece carries on by itself

   Plenty of orders are not one engraving. A charm with a message on the back, a pendant with two faces, three charms on one bracelet: each of those is another setup at the same machine.

   • A job can hold several steps: one per piece, a front and a back, or one step with two faces
   • Without Auto shift, the operator moves between them with Back and Next, and a strip of dots shows which piece is on the laser now
   • With Auto shift ticked, the next step loads itself as soon as the mark finishes, with no second scan or button press
   • The tick is remembered between sessions, and the job on screen follows it the moment it changes
   • The steps are not always the same kind of thing: on one bookmark the verse goes on the bar and the reference goes on the heart, each in its own font
   • When the last step is done the window says Scan the next order paper

   How I built it: Auto shift

   • The next step rewrites the canvas, so it waits for the same Part counter check instead of a fixed delay
   • It advances only when there is somewhere to advance to, which stops a single piece job looping
   • Why it exists: pressing Next moved focus to Laser Station, so the operator's F2 went to the wrong window. With Auto shift, the usual case needs no click

   A three piece bracelet drawing, not a screenshot

How I built it

How each part works

A Python desktop program for Windows, packaged as a single app and built with Claude Code. Most of the features below came from problems on the shop floor.