7.1.2 Laser Beam Positioning and Movement |
Laser beam movement is specified by 9.1.1 Straight Lines and Jumps, each of which takes the end position of a vector as at least one of its arguments.
The starting position of a given vector is implicitly the end position of the preceding vector, except immediately after the controller card has been reset or powered-up, when the laser beam is positioned at the center of the field.
Division of vectors into micro-stepsTo allow the galvanometer scanners to move to the end co-ordinates of input vectors with precisely controlled accelerations and velocities, the input vectors are divided into micro-steps, each of which represents a position update for the scanners, and whose size is determined in general by the currently specified mark or jump speed (see MARK_SPEED or JUMP_SPEED, respectively.)
This diagram shows how the card divides a vector's X component into micro-steps. The Y and Z components are treated in the same way.