Hey Paul;
I can't vote as I only have experience with LinkMotion, but I have to say that experience has been excellent. I do model airplanes and I wanted to be able to laser cut parts. Having to watch my pennies (pence??) I chose to go with a kit produced by buildyourcnc.com. 40 watt, Chinese glass CO2 laser. I ordered the recommended controller & software from them, planet-cnc software, and a BYC controller board based on the planet-cnc offering. Nothing at all againt the BYC guys, but in my opinion that are CNC router guys that must have said, lets add a tube and mirrors and sell a laser. Bottom line, it worked! Power is controlled by a 50k pot and each cut job had a single speed setting. BYC had me turn on and off the laser with the Z axis. This had a problem with a major burn before the laser head started moving. (hence my CNC Router guys comment) I spoke with planet-cnc and they had me wire the controller differently which greatly improved things but I still had the power and speed issues. My resolution was to split each job into 3, send text, small parts, and large parts as seperate files. I should also mention that each job was a dxf file that had to be imported into the planet software to be converted to g code each time.
So I looked for something better. I found Solustan based out of Needham just 15 miles away. I called them up and they invited me over to their facility to hook up my notebook to their test bench as they did not know if they were compatible with TurboCad. Their solution resides on the controller pc as a "printer" and you just print to the laser. TurboCad appeared to work and the solution allowed me to go to a digital power control, and multiple power settings within a single job. So off to the shop. Now, all of this has happened in the last couple of weeks, so solutions here are not final, but...
A) I am having issues with TurboCad. The g-code that the print driver is sending to the laser is just not right. I am getting power changes in unexpected places, weird gantry movements, etc. A call to to Dhiren and Ashmi has them coming up with a quick workaround using Corel that is allowing me to continue to work while they are looking into the problem. They also have come out with version 4 of their driver software which may help but I haven't tried it as yet.
This Corel solution works great! wysiwyg all the way. The only problem is I don't know Corel, but I am learning what I have to to get the job done. I am using a trial version of Corel and am hoping that I will not need to buy it. Basically, what I am doing is saving to a dxf from TCad and importing into Corel.
I can't say enough about the support I am getting. Update and follow up calls and e-mails, they are contacting TurboCad to see what might be happening, the list just goes on. I am actually kind of happy that I am experiencing issue with TCad. When dealing with a new to me company, having a problem and seeing how they address it tells me a lot about them and I can wholeheartedly recommend Solustan and the LinkMotion solution. I am confident that I will eventually be lasing directly from TurboCad.