So while developing my $50 laser cutter I needed a program that would help me turn vector designs into a series of steps that could run the motors. These steps are human readable, here’s an example text file: Flutter File. If you were to take 0 as north, and 1 as north east, 2 as east and so on and walked this document out you would have drawn this charming man: 
The program can be found here and is pretty neat, just upload a EPS file and it will turn it into a text file of steps to take like this:
The C program I wrote to run a set of stepper motors using this type of text file can be found here.
For a full description on how I made a laser cutter and how to make one for yourself can be found at my instructable.
There have been a few people who have made the laser cutter, but none as beautifully as Samuel Ward’s:
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