Yep thats true. Best to make those holes as slots just in case you need some final adjusting.

I'd love to see that design.

 

I'll have to try one of those. I'm currently designing my own but it'll be nice to benchmark it against something that works. I tried LaserWeb cursorily but found it a little unstable. It kept freezing and losing the serial connection. I'll do some more in-depth testing this weekend.

 

I erased my version of grbl with their beta version that I'm testing. Where are you getting stuck? Their wiki explains in detail how to upload grbl to an Arduino.

 

Where are you stuck? You need to download the zip from their github site. Once extracted, you'll see a folder named grbl inside the main folder. You need to copy this to your Arduino libraries (usually called 'libraries' under the Arduino folder where your sketches are saved). Then open Arduino, choose grbl from File > Examples and then hit upload. Once the upload completes, open your serial monitor and hit '$$' to get all the options and set values. I use this settings calculator or the Prusa calculator.

Thanks! That is what it was meant for. I'd love to see the Aluminium plates. I'm sure they look really nice and they'll be super stable.

 

For the steps/mm ($100, $101, $102) settings you'll need to set it as per the microstepping resolution you've set. Are you using the A4988 stepper boards? Their microstep resolution can be set using jumpers. Check out the polulu page for A4988 for more details on which jumpers select what microstep value (Also works for DRV8825 stepper boards is thats what you are using, except here the placement of jumpers and the corresponding microstep resolution is different from what its for A4988).

I had mine set at 1/16 microstep. This combined with a 1.8 deg, 200 steps/rev NEMA 17 stepper motor and a GT2 2mm pitch belt resulted in steps/mm of 80. Your acceleration settings seem fine. I would tone down the X and Y max rate ($110, $111) to 4000.

 

I'm not sure I understand. All my 3D models are in Fusion 360 but the STLs should work for all purposes.

 

Attached here.

 

@Robert Kirkpatrick Just sent you a private message about this.

 

Are the rails for the laser slide just stuck to the main plate? There is a good chance they'll come off once the system is running and a running laser falling off the gantry is not a good thing. I think there is a post somewhere above where a Z-axis slide mount is suggested with a Thingiverse link. A modified version of that might be more reliable. Also they seem to be blocking the nuts. At the very least the rails should have a chamfer at the bottom to increase the gluing surface area and without the slots on the plate.

 

I wouldn't know about the C-beam CNC since I do not have one but I'm guessing it has a plate for attaching the router holder? If it does, you could just swap out the holder for a laser module mounted in a SK8 or SK12-type mountings (the laser diode is mounted in a 12/20/25mm copper module which is then fit in the SK8/12/20 mount). I designed my own CNC driver to control the laser. I think the xPro runs on grbl and grbl uses the D11 pin of the Arduino to control the spindle speed through a PWM signal and the M3/M5 Gcode command. You could use the same pin to instead control the laser (if its brought out on the board somewhere).

 

I think it was a no-name Chinese brand. Doesn't really matter as long as it's PETG.

 

Happy to help and there are no newbie questions when building anything This build was designed to be very minimal. This made it very easy to add-on modifications. For e.g. I recently made an add-on for cable management.

I've been acquainted with 3D printing very recently and if I read it right, the RAMBo board runs the Marlin firmware and folks have modified it to use it with a laser as well. I haven't been brave enough to attempt this though.

My boards are pre-flashed with the grbl firmware v0.9j so you don't really have to do anything other than hook it up to the motors and get started. I've brought the D11 (spindle speed pwm) pin out on the board and you can use this to control any laser driver using the M3 and M5 gcode commands. The pwm is scaled using the S attribute along with M3.

The good folks at grbl have come up with a new version which has a specific laser mode. Since the hardware configuration is still the same, my boards do support this version. I've been tinkering to figure out how it works in the software and G-code.

 

I should really write a post Here is the link to the hookup guide on my website. On Tindie, there is a link called Documentation on the bottom right and that points to this page. Its really easy to connect the board to the laser driver. Here is a simplified block diagram that shows how to connect the laser to the board. Essentially you need to connect your laser to the board using the "Spindle PWM" (bottom right corner on the headers on the board) and GND pins. Most laser drivers have a PWM input or at minimum some form of input that would let you switch it on and off through software. These pins go on that input. My laser driver accepts a 12V power supply but this can vary with other drivers.

If this were a CNC machine (which use the industry standard Gcodes), grbl would control the router spindle speed using this pin by sending out a PWM waveform (and hence an average DC voltage between 0V and 5V). With a laser, this pin can be used to control the amount of current that the laser driver feeds to the laser. For e.g. if your laser can take a maximum of 2A, then the 0V on the pin would correspond to 0A while 5V would feed the full 2A. Anything in between would linearly scale the current delivered to the laser. grbl manipulates this pin through the M3 S<number> Gcode. In grbl v0.9j a gcode of M3 S1000 would output a full 5V on the spindle pwm pin and M3 S0 (or just M5) would output 0V.

There are plenty of interfaces that convert your image/vector diagram to a Gcode, one that grbl can interpret. Piclaser is a good one though its paid, I came across another one called Image2gcode which seems easy to use and apparently is developed for low power lasers such as these. There is also another web-based program called LaserWeb which shows a lot of promise. There is also the tried and tested Inkscape plugin called gcodetools (it comes inbuilt with Inkscape) however, this can only output gcode for line drawings and vector images and not raster images such as photographs. All these programs let you set the Gcode you want to use to turn the laser on and off and scale its power. Once you get this Gcode you'll need something that streams the Gcode to the hardware and move the machine, so to speak. Plenty of options here again: UniversalGcodeSender, Candle, grblPanel, bCNC etc. (look at the grbl Wiki. There is a whole list there). I personally use Candle and grblPanel.

In the new v1.1, grbl has a special laser mode. I think this was implemented to prevent scorch marks that appear around corners when you are cutting or engraving materials such as wood. I'm not fully sure, but with this new mode all you need to do to operate the laser is use just the S<number> Gcode. You can also set the minimum and maximum S value that would correspond to 0V and 5V (instead of using the older default values of 1000 and 0. You could set these too in the older version but they had to be tweaked through the firmware configuration files before the upload to the board). grbl then takes care of scaling the laser power between corner moves to prevent material scorching. If this mode is too confusing, you can always disable the laser mode and use it as the older versions. My boards support both.

A lot depends on the laser driver as well. Though I have uploaded schematics to a driver on my build page, it does not support scaling of current and it can either turn the laser ON at full power or switch it off completely. I'm designing a new driver and still in the midst of some testing.

Hope I haven't confused you even further!

One of the reasons I made this board was to prevent all the messy wiring between an Arduino and a separate motor driver board. Something would come off and all hell would break loose. DTR also sells drivers with his lasers.