hello folks! i have a c beam Machine (heavily modified) powered with a black box controller. i am wanting to install a cheap diode laser that i have so i can get better resolution engraving. the laser i have is from one of the cheap Mana boards. it has 2 wires from the driver- one i assume is a ground, and the other is TTL. is it possible to use this laser with the black box? Any help is greatly appreciated!
"TTL" in this context is just 5V level PWM. Some of those off-brand drivers take 12V PWM, so double-check that. You could easily level shift if necessary, but it shouldn't be if it's labelled TTL. BlackBox is Arduino/grbl based, so it should output a 1kHz TTL-level PWM signal on the spindle speed output and hook straight up.
OpenBuilds BlackBox 4X Documentation should be similar, except instead of powering the laser off the Meanwell, the Mana probably came with its own wall wart?
it did indeed come with its own wall wart. and through that is the only way i can get the laser to fire. I'm guessing the mana board has some internal controls that fire the laser and power it through the two wires that go into the driver. i decided to order a more conventional driver that should simplify this whole thing. i will follow up when i get it all hooked up.
that makes sense. the PSU the cheap board came with was 12v, and i haven't been able to get it to fire with anything less than that.
It runs on 12V, but TTL is 5V. There may be a shared ground, I've seen some odd 3-pin drivers out there.
This is a two wire setup. The BlackBox manual has directions for 3 and 4 wire setups. I can’t wrap my head around how the 2 wire setup works. I’m guessing it’s just a simple on and off from the mana board.
What are your "laser inputs"? When we talk about "laser inputs", we mean pin inputs to the laser driver board, not the laser itself, which just takes power of some kind. If you only have a laser, with no driver, you need to get a driver board for it, which will be 3 or 4 pin input. If you do mean the driver board only has two inputs, perhaps a picture will help. It may be purely on/off, as you say. I've seen some out there like that, it's not unheard of.
