hi i have a 40 watt co2 laser it is made by fs and the control cards went out need to know what is a good set is to get to replace the company has a set the cost is high you see a lot of cards on the market but how do yo tell if they are what a person needs the machine has two stepper motors and a red light pointer and the laser tube to control i see on the listing that a lot of people are talking about the 40k from overseas don't know about things when it comes to electronics am a master craftsman in wood for 45 yrs thank you for you time and the help if you can timothy
A simple GRBL shield using your existing stepper drivers will set you back about $5 Get an arduino Due to go with the GRBL shield and run G2Core and it will probably be a huge step up on the Chinese one. There are others, from Azteeg, Tiny, Smoothie, etc. but they have stepped drivers built in. It will require some fettling, but is pretty straightforward and there are plenty of instructionals on the net - just google ‘upgrade K40 controller” Heaps of help on the google plus K40 community: https://plus.google.com/communities/118113483589382049502 As you don’t need much motive power, any 3D printer controller, Ramps board, TinyG, etc. will work, but you can add more functionality (like Ethernet connection, on-board storage, etc.) by selecting the features you want - just make sure the board you buy is easily configured. Open source or similar will be fine, and cheap. If it was me, I would choose a 32-bit controller with Ethernet. an Azteeg with the fewest number of drivers you need - x an y axes, plus bed height adjust? Controllers But if price matters, $25 will get you running from China Opensource Laser: Cheap Chinese Laser Engraver/Cutter Upgraded with Smoothieware Running on Azteeg X5 mini board
I use the Cohesion 3D on my ACRO and K40 and works great with both. I has sockets for stepper drivers but also has a header available that will plug into the socket to connect external drivers.
Cohesion is a Smoothie 32-bit variant, same as Smoothie, Azteeg, MKS, etc. After looking at various K40 machines, some come with external drivers, some use an integrated board. But, most of them seem to use Nema23s, so pretty much anything with a decent stepper driver like a DRV8825 will work fine. You can get a decent 32-bit with touch panel display running Smoothie for ~$100 on AliExpress. That would be a step up from anything shipped as standard on a K40
