Best posts made by pauledd

Sure:
http://p-bg.de/files/AnyDuet_config.rar

But be careful and always have one finger in the power switch when testing my config. Config without warranty

Hi

I just want to show you what can be done with a laser module and the Duet Wifi Board.

Last year I modified my Anycubic I3 Mega and ripped out its propietary brain and put a Duet Wifi in. It printed very well so my next desire was to attach a uv-laser module to it and improve my pcb exposing process and leave off the old toner transfer method.

I ordered an cheap 30€ 400nm 0.5Watt UV-Laser module and I was able to expose my photosensitive pcb's with a pwm power of 5 (of 255) and a speed of 300mm/s. This is quite slow but if I go faster I encounter a lot of jitter on small traces. So I currently can etch traces as small as 10mil (0,25mm). I did not try to go lower but I think this is still possible. Maybe its quite impractical to attach the laser to the printhead-front. That might introduce quite some mass to the construction while the head is lasering and doing rapid moves.

But the best is, the laser workflow is much less stressful and more consistent in good results.
I even just tried to create a solder mask by cutting simple kapton tape, and to my surprise this worked too, with a laser power of 150 and speed 300mm/s, but with two passes.

On this board (1,6x3,3cm) the big traces are 12mil. The little IC is a 3x3mm LFCSP with 0,5mm pads pitch. I have no clue if I can solder that tiny thing

So I am very pleased with the results that the Duet-Laser already delivers with even more room for optimization

PS. I use Kicad-->Flatcam to prepare my gcode files but I had to write a python script to further postprocess the gcode file from flatcam, because flatcam was made for CNC, not for laser. So I had to exchange the drill commands in the gcode with laser-on/off commands...

@EasyTarget said in Turn laser only on?:

What happens if you do the same with M3?

Works!
Can now turn ON/OFF the Laser with M3 S255, M3 S0
Thanks.

@grizewald thanks

Works now!
What I did:

• replugged Z(-) stepper into E0 and Z-endstop into E0

config.g:

• moving the M584 code above M208 code
• changed M584 to M584 X0 Y1 Z2:3 U3 E4 P3
• corrected M566 to M566 X900.00 Y900.00 Z12.00 U12.00 E120.00

homeall.g:

• changed M98 to M98 Phomez.g

homez.g:

G91               ; relative positioning

G1 Z10 F3000 H2   ; lift Z relative 10mm

; split Z motor control to Z and U
; for it to work we have to show U (param P4) in the UI
M584 Z2:3 U3 P4

; Move Z and U  down until the switches triggers
G1 Z-205 U-205 F100 H1

; back to combined axes and hidden U
M584 Z2:3 U3 P3

; Back to absolute positioning
G90

; Tell the firmware where we are
G92 Z0

; lift Z after probing
G91
G1 Z10 F1000
G90

Tomorrow I have the fans on my list

@g0rg said in Weird Laser Mode:

if i remove the small board, is it normal to measure 3.7v between gnd and pin8 ?

Well, I would expect 3.3V, I dont know why you read 3.7V ?
Yes on the bare pin I would expect High level right after boot, and the attached board should invert the logic to 0V until you issue your laser commands.

Thats the problem I had:

@grizewald
Thanks a lot! I changed the lines to your suggestions.

If I now HOME-Z and I trigger the left endstop the right stepper stops moving and the left stepper keeps moving until I trigger the right endstop.

And vice versa if I trigger the the right endstop first the left stepper stops moving and the right stepper keeps moving until I trigger the left endstop.

So the behaviour is now much more kind of correct but exactly the opposite of what I expected, that is to say left endstop stops left stepper, right endstop stops right stepper. I double checked that I didnt twist the endstops accidentally but they are in the correct socket as drawn in the image above.
Shall I twist them simply to make them behave correctly or is there still somewhere a misconfiguration perceivable

@g0rg Can you double check that you attached the small board to the correct pins?
I had the same case were the laser was always on until I noticed that the pin-socket that goes into duets expansion header was attached with a offset by one pin...

Seems to work, will test extensively tomorrow but I am quite optimistic, thanks so far

Thanks, I again missed that, so I will mark S1 & S0 as NOT PWM in my brain.
I was irritated because I worked with the M3 S1 command over a year and that did not set the laser to FULL power, insead it used 1/255th PWM...

So then PWM value 2 is the lowest possible setting for my laser... I think I can live with that.

I did a lot of "Homings" today and the Z-axis didn't crash in the endstops again. I consider this Anycubic to Anyduet conversion as success!

The rest is just optimizing, putting all the stuff together an waiting for delivery of new cables. Thanks a lot for your help.