Laser or CNC?

[Palamedes]

Dumb question time...

If you output your work file (stl?) of a gear or something does it always work with all cnc machines?  that's "g-code" right?  is it a universal language or do you have to change per machine? etc..

[ArtF]

Only Gcode runs on most machines. An Stl file is  file format defining  a 3d object used by cam programs to generate GCode or 3d printers to print from.

Art