Hello one and all ~

I am seeking assistance in setting up my laser. I have finished building a 48" x 24" setup.
- optics harvested from older hk40 machine
- Xylotex board from my router
- DigiSpeed to allow PWM control
- Mach 3 (unlicensed, demo)

Currently, things "work" . I can feed in short gcode. I use M11P2 to switch on a relay and the laser fires. I use M10P2 or M05 and the relay switches off which makes the laser stop firing.

Problems:
There is a short delay between M11P2 and laser firing. I realize that I have mine set to turn on a relay which in turn fires the laser. I believe I have my output2 set to pin 17.

Do I need the isolation of a relay to fire the laser?
Can I "basically" go straight from pin 17 to the firing pin "L" on the laser power supply?


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For engraving, I plan to use the Mach engraving plug in... But for vector cuts, I would like to use PPI. Is there a Mach 3 solution?

Thanks,

Steve