While the eBay / K40 Laser is a great tool for the money it does have one major drawback and that is its “controler”. For some reason it’s chinese creators have decided to cripple it with a proprietary control board, USB dongle and sub-par software documented in Mandarin. Well, there is a way to right this wrong and it’s called Arduino and GRBL whereas you you pull out the existing controller ( Moshidraw Board) and replace with an Arduino running GRBL. In short the eBay / K40 Laser cutter & engraver is pretty simple machine in that it only uses two (2) axis (X & Y) as while as a binary firing (i.e. On or Off) firing mechanism for the laser tube. As the GRBL firmware can control up to 4 motors, a spindle and cooling system. There is more than enough “logic” out to run this little gem in the rough.
Current GRBL setting to run a common eBay CO2 Laser with a CNC Shield:
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>>> $$ $0=10 (step pulse, usec) $1=25 (step idle delay, msec) $2=0 (step port invert mask:00000000) $3=1 (dir port invert mask:00000001) $4=0 (step enable invert, bool) $5=0 (limit pins invert, bool) $6=0 (probe pin invert, bool) $10=3 (status report mask:00000011) $11=0.010 (junction deviation, mm) $12=0.002 (arc tolerance, mm) $13=0 (report inches, bool) $20=0 (soft limits, bool) $21=0 (hard limits, bool) $22=0 (homing cycle, bool) $23=0 (homing dir invert mask:00000000) $24=25.000 (homing feed, mm/min) $25=500.000 (homing seek, mm/min) $26=250 (homing debounce, msec) $27=1.000 (homing pull-off, mm) $100=39.516 (x, step/mm) $101=39.514 (y, step/mm) $102=250.000 (z, step/mm) $110=10000.000 (x max rate, mm/min) $111=10000.000 (y max rate, mm/min) $112=500.000 (z max rate, mm/min) $120=50.000 (x accel, mm/sec^2) $121=50.000 (y accel, mm/sec^2) $122=10.000 (z accel, mm/sec^2) $130=200.000 (x max travel, mm) $131=200.000 (y max travel, mm) $132=200.000 (z max travel, mm) |
