Marking

Zenom talks to the machine itself: a direct USB connection to the controller, driver installation from inside the app, a red-light preview before the burn and a simulation that runs the real marking pipeline.

Works with your machine

Connection

• Direct USB to the JCZ controller — no vendor DLLs and no 32-bit shims; on connect Zenom reads the board type, firmware and serial number.
• Driver setup is built in: if the controller needs the WinUSB driver, the app installs it itself — no Zadig. One click restores the original driver when you need to run EzCad on the same machine again.
• MARK and Red Light auto-connect when the laser is not connected yet; the status bar always shows the live state.
• Emulator mode runs the entire program against a built-in controller emulator — prepare layouts, “mark” and inspect results without a machine.

The marking cycle

• MARK (F2) with a passes-per-press counter, a part counter and a live marking-time estimate that updates as you change parameters.
• Mark Selected limits the job to the current selection.
• Continue Mode — the EzCad flow for batch work: after each burn the red-light trace restarts for positioning the next part, and F2 fires again right from the trace.
• Continuous mode repeats the job in a loop until Esc. It is the default loop path and is going through final on-machine validation; when a job cannot run continuously (external IO, auto-advancing serials, raster engraving, mixed pens), Zenom says why and marks a single pass instead.
• Optimize Order re-orders objects nearest-neighbor to cut idle jumps.
• Esc always stops the laser — regardless of where keyboard focus is.

Red light and simulation

• Red Light (F1) traces the layout without firing: exact contours, a convex hull or a bounding box; offsets and scale compensate the pointer’s physical misalignment against the working beam.
• Simulation (F4) replays the job on the canvas through the real marking pipeline — hatching, delays and travel order included, with play/seek/speed controls, jump display and a time breakdown after the run. What the simulator shows is what the controller receives.

Calibration

• Lens correction (.cor): use an existing EzCad/SeaCAD file, import your whole EzCad markcfg7 configuration in one step, or build your own file with the built-in Lens Calibration wizard — mark a grid, enter the measured deviations, save and verify.
• BiDir calibration aligns even and odd raster scan lines with one control.
• Test Fire — a controlled pulse at the field center with set frequency, power and duration.
• Material Test generates a test matrix right on the canvas — rows and columns sweep two parameters (speed, power, frequency, pulse width or hatch spacing); burn it once, pick the best cell, transfer the mode to a pen.
• Test Fire is confirmed on hardware; the calibration wizard, BiDir calibration and Material Test are implemented end to end, and their systematic on-machine validation is still in progress.

Hardware settings, honestly

Six tabs cover the field and galvo corrections, laser source presets (IPG, Raycus, JPT, MaxPhotonics — including MOPA pulse-width control), marking delays and speed limits, park position after the job, the rotary axis, IO and connection diagnostics. Lens profiles snapshot the whole field setup per lens and switch in one click. Fields the controller does not consume yet are visibly disabled with an explanation — no dials that silently do nothing.

Not in Zenom

• No on-the-fly conveyor marking (fly mark) — the setting exists in the pen dialog but honestly reports it is not implemented yet.
• No CO2/UV sources and no DSP controllers (Ruida, Trocen) — Zenom drives galvo fiber machines on the JCZ board.
• Raster engraving runs bounded passes only (not in continuous loop mode), and systematic on-machine validation of the raster scan path is still in progress.