MeerK40t (pronounced MeerKat) is a built-from-the-ground-up MIT licensed open-source laser cutting software.
The primary goals of this software is simple:
To get up and running, simply download Meerk40t from here for your specific platform. (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and by extension, Raspberry Pi).
Meerk40t has an advanced internal console system allowing access to most parts of the code with various commands. It also provides a command line interface which should allow you to automate any processes. To learn more, download a version of Meerk40t for your platform, and execute it in a terminal with the --help
argument to get a list of options.
Alternatively you can run MeerK40t directly from Python. pip install meerk40t[all]
with python installed will usually be sufficient. Then merely run meerk40t
at the command line.
The wxMeerK40t is the GUI and is written in wxPython. We use AUI to allow to have a very highly configurable UI. We can easily add panes and tools and there are quite a few available already.
Meerk40t provides a variety of drivers with an extensible framework to provide support for other new laser devices. The code was written with the myriad of possibilities for different software in mind. For example, it may be essential that GRBL be able to reset an alarm or notify the user of particular error codes. The configuration for GRBL is not the same for the configuration of other laser control drivers. With this in mind, Meerk40t can radically change how and when it works
The primary source for help and documentation is the MeerK40t Wiki - please click here.
If you have a bug, feature request, or other issue raise it here. These are likely to be resolved. Squeaky wheels get the grease. https://github.com/meerk40t/meerk40t/issues
If you need additional support, please research/ask on:
Open source projects live and die with their support. There are a lots of ways to help the project. There are also a lot of ways the project should help you.
If you want to get into contact and help, then the Discord Channel is the easiest and fastest way to reach out to us - we are looking forward to hear from you.
Meerk40t allows to act as an intermediary between your K40 laser and software that supports Ruida-controlled laser equipment - Lightburn is a relevant example of such a software product. You just need to issue the command ruidacontrol
in MeerK40ts console window, and you will then be able to add an emulated Ruida Laser inside Lightburn™. Laser jobs that are created inside Lightburn™ and sent to this laser will be picked up by MeerK40t and sent to your K40. See some more detailed instructions in this video. Please note ruidacontrol
will require the DSP version of Lightburn™. (Present in all versions since 0.7)
With 0.9 another way of interacting with Lightburn was introduced, which will work as well with the standard version of LB: You just need to issue the command grblcontrol
in MeerK40ts console window, and you will then be able to add an emulated remote GBRL-LPC laser inside Lightburn or any TCP GRBL control software.