This website is a gold mine for laser engravers, because you can find free, online, minimalist softwares that help with laser engraving here.

One is currently the Laser Puritanic 1.0 G-code generator, the other is the Circular Text Purinatic 1.0, which you can use, for example, when you want to make circular text on key chains.

Both programs are minimalist, they only give you what you need, and do it professionally.

Laser Puritanic 1.0 G-code generator

What does the g-code generator know that nothing else can?

Laser engraving can be done in two ways. One is vector, when the laser head moves over the surface like you write with a pen, and the laser writes almost continuously. This mode is very fast, but it is only good for simple writing or drawing shapes. If you want to take a photo, it is not good for that. 

The other engraving mode is raster. Then the laser head travels from top to bottom and from left to right to each pixel of the required area, and when the pixel is black, it places a dot with the laser at that point. Many people want to engrave images beautifully by using the laser to produce a gray tone so that when the pixel of the image has a gray tone, the laser light adjusts to it and burns less, leaving a brown mark on the wood instead of a black one. I think this method is not so good, because the color of the wood material is variable. When printing on paper, gray is created by using a so-called dither technique, i.e. the gray tones are created from the density of small black dots of the same size. For example, if you want to laser engrave small heads (about 2-3cm) on a key ring, you can still use this technique well with 0.01 dots, i.e. 100 pixels/cm resolution, and even the cheapest laser engraving machines can do this. 

The problem, however, stems from the mechanics of the machines, that the shaft is wobbly, loose, and has backlash. In this case, the laser cannot engrave nicely, and even engraves a ghost image. With more expensive software, this is handled by only engraving every second line, and then the ghost image caused by the backlash disappears, but the engraving will be striped. This does not cause a problem with text, but with small head images it destroys the image produced with the dither technique. 

Laser Puritanic 1.0 generates a g-code that eliminates the ghost image caused by the axis backlash, but engraves on every line, so it does not destroy the dither image and you can make a high-quality image even in small sizes. The disadvantage of this is double the working time. When you need higher quality, at the cost of double the working time, then use it!

Circular Text Purinatic 1.0

You can use the Circular Text Purinatic 1.0 program if you want to engrave circular text on the back of a circular key ring, for example. Sometimes you can only produce such an image with greater effort, or you may have to install and learn more complicated software, but this Circular Text Purinatic 1.0 is also simple, free online, so you can use it right away! If you want to make several circular texts inside each other, you can easily edit several photos into one in a simple image editor, such as the free PhotoFiltre. The program only does what is missing, but you can do everything with its help.

If you like my programs, invite me for a coffee or/and check out my websites below also!:

My PayPal: tibsim14@gmail.com

Thanks to Gemini and Chatgpt for the help!