Adding a laser engraver to my CNC machine
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 เม.ย. 2021
- I show an inexpensive way to add laser engraving capabilities to a hobbyist CNC machine. Sorry that the video quality is poor in sections. I had an issue with my video editing software crashing and replacing the HD files with the proxy files and I didn't have time to re-edit the video.
Thank you ... was looking for something like this to turn my diy pen plotter into a sometimes laser engraver .. awesome set up btw.
I had a lot of troubles with my cnc laser but this video helped me, thank you so much dude.
I’m glad it was useful to you. Happy engraving.
Interesting video. Thank you for sharing this info. It would be interesting to have more info on your cnc machine.
The frame is a workbee kit. The rest is an Arduino GRBL controller, nema 23 motors and S109AFTG motor drivers.
Thank you for this video 😀, with this configuration, can i drive directly the laser diode? (in my 5w module, i burned the driver, but the diode still works)
fair dinkum video cheers cobba
some of my ancestral relatives got sent to "the stralia" for being naughty,botany bay.
Some went as £10 poms(ten pound poms) in the 50's(fifties),LOL.
Mate.
Hi, does that irf520 module produce PWM signal to the laser (changing power of the laser)? Or just making it On/off?
Just turns it on/off. This laser doesn’t support PWM. I have another video where I add a laser with pwm.
Do you mind adding details of the modules to the description?
I have CNC Shield with a Relay that control ON/OFF in the 12V spindle. Wouldn't that be sufficient to connect directly a laser head instead of a spindle?
Maybe. A solid state relay might be okay. An electromechanical relay might not be suitable.
This was helpful. Are there any issues when using two types of grbl cnc/laser; or is resolved in the physical switch?
I don’t have any issues running both. I do alter the Grbl settings depending on whether I’m running a laser or router project. The changes I make for a laser job is turning on laser mode, adjusting the soft limits to accommodate the laser head being attached and increasing the speed/acceleration settings since the laser doesn’t experience the same resistive forces as a router head. I have created custom buttons in laserGRBL that make this change between modes quickly. If you watch my other laser video I show the buttons there.
Thanks for the reply, your explanations help to clear the fog in (for me) a very cloudy process. I'll check out your other vids as you have suggested.
Nice as far as you go, but most hobby CNCs are controlled by Mach3 using parallel out. Arduino shields use USB. How did you get your CNC to work on the GRBL shield? did you disconnect the motors from the CNC controller and run the motors from the GRBL/Arduino shield? Shields are generally sized for Nema 17 motors, which are a bit small for a CNC router. What size motors do you have? did you have to buffer the signals out of the shield to run the motors? YOU said it used the Z out to turn the laser on, then how did you set a focus distance? I was originally going to use my CNC also, but saw this powering problem and decided to just make a whole new CNC machine using GRBL and smaller motors. I only need it to engrave small stuff, My main laser can handle all the big stuff (it overpowers small engravings). Thanks bro.
I don't use Mach3, I use Universal GCode Sender for CNCing and LaserGRBL for the laser stuff. I built my machine from a workbee kit and I used the Arduino + shield connected via USB without any issues. I am using NEMA23 motors they are 2.8 amp I think. They do connect to the shield although the stepper drivers needed to be selected with the motors in mind because like you say many are intended for the NEMA17 and they couldn't handle the current for a NEMA23. I don't do any buffering.
Regarding the Z limit pin being used to drive the laser. I made an incorrect assumption there and what I said isn't right. I now know that when put into laser mode GRBL actually swaps the Z-limit pin and the Spindle Enable pin (used to drive laser also). It does this because the pin originally allocated to spindle enable didn't support variable speed spindles or PWM lasers. Not having that Z limit didn't affect my ability to move the laser up and down to focus it just meant I couldn’t home the Z-Axis because the limit switch wasn't recognised. Knowing what I do now I have wired the z limit switch to the "spindle enable" pin and it is all good.
Dear @@blackcatdown9560
You mean that we'don't need anything other than CNCshield to drive Laser? I heard also CNCShield Z axis could be use to drive Laser because of there is no need to Z axis to use Lazer. But I could'nt see detailed documentation or video how to use Z Axis to control LAser power?!
@@mucip_ilbuga when laser mode is enabled in GRBL the spindle enable pin and the z limit pin are swapped. There is documentation about this on the GRBL wiki site. You still need something to drive the laser. In the example of the video I use a mosfet to do this. Some laser heads do have a built in driver however and they can just connect to the shield and a power source.
Dear @@blackcatdown9560
Thanks for valuable answer. Well, how can I understand if the laser head has ability of built in driver? What is the spec?
I checked from some internet sellers but could not understand very well unfortunatelly.
@@mucip_ilbuga I am by no means an expert on laser heads, so consider this a generalisation and not gospel. In my experience if the laser head has only 2 wires; for the power source then it doesn't have a built in driver. If it has 3 wires, two for the power source and one for a signal/control wire (probably referred to as PWM or TTL) it likely has a built in driver. If you want a built in driver - laser heads capable of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) or transistor-transistor-logic (TTL) are a good place to start your search.
Hi! I hope you are good, Can you please tell me, I want to write program of laser engraving and uploading it in Arduino UNO is there any video about it?
Hi. Great stuff, but I wonder, since I also use shield V3 and use router for negrawing, which is not owm. How could I hook both router and PWM laser and upgrade to grbl 1.1
You must upgrade to grbl 1.1 and activate laser $32=1 to use laser, for router deactivate laser
could it applied to 80watt 12volt?
Hello !! I have a 1064 infrared laser module. Three wires, black-red-white. Do you think this connection could work? Thank you in advance
Hi. Without knowing your laser specs I can only generalise, but being an infrared laser shouldn’t matter and this should still work. However since it has 3 wires I suspect your laser can do PWM, meaning the red/black is power and the white is for the control signal. Pwm (pulse width modulation) allows for greater control over the laser. I made a follow up to this video about adding a PWM capable laser that might help you.
@@blackcatdown9560 Thank you so much. I understood perfectly, I will see how to configure the GRBL. (Translation with Google)
I want to control the laser by getting pwm output with RAMPS 1.4. The laser has no driver. It has 12V AND GND outputs. How do I control the laser by receiving the pwm signal with a circuit?
You say your laser only has 2 wires and no driver so it sounds like your laser is a "non PWM/constant on" laser (like in the video). These lasers are either fully off (0v) or fully on (12v), there are no other power levels available. This means the MOSFET driver circuit shown in this video is exactly what you need to drive the laser from the PWM signal wire. You may or may not need to change some GRBL settings or config file too. Note that when in laser mode GRBL swaps some output pins around too. Search Laser Mode in the GRBL wiki and you should find all the info you need on that.
@@thorleifjacobsen Hi Mate, this laser is the on/off only type, there is no PWM or variable power. M4 is Dynamic Power Mode, this is for use with a PWM laser. This mode dynamically adjusts the laser's output power to compensate for the accelerating and decelerating of the laser head. In other words when the laser moves slower it lowers the power and when it moves faster it increases the power and this results in a more even burn across the job. M4 will probably still work for you (without adjusting the power), but for your laser M3 is the more correct setting. The 0-1000 setting or a 0-255 setting should be okay provided your GRBL settings match.
Your laser produces effectively black or white (no shades of gray). If you would like to engrave photos it needs to be done with dithering. This is using patterns of black and white dots to create the appearance of grays. You'll need to do some trial and error to find the optimal settings; so best to start with some scrap material. Read up on LaserGRBL's dithering tools on their website too.
Oh my hell... YOU DO NOT PLUG A LASER STRAIGHT INTO POWER! You will damage it! (If you do please don't sell it to me on ebay later, as "lightly used"). You need a driver board. Mosfets are indeed awesome current sources, but only under special conditions(saturation mode). For each laser, you need to know two things: voltage and current. If you are just varying a duty cycle without even a filter network you may easily exceed both limits. If you really want to build your own current source, it's a bit of a rabbit hole, but basically, it can be done with a properly biased MOSFET and RC filter network to convert PWM to voltage level to drive the gate. There's a ton of info in MIT's 6.002 course online for example, for those really curious. Personally, I would just get a driver board.
@@vladshcherbakov3112 Hi Mate, I think you are over complicating this. The laser module used here is a ready to use product intended for hobbyists laser engravers. It really does just require a direct 12v power source. The MOSFET here is acting as a switch turning that power source on and off based on a 3.3v signal from the controller.
Why If my #18 wire to ground. my Y only travels in one direction
My setup has no pin 18. Is yours a GRBL machine? What electronics is it using? Why do you need to ground that pin?
hello, this looks very interesting,
can i have your contact please?
i am from Mauritius,
i have a 6090cnc and want to add a laser module to it..
please advise me
thanks
Hi Mate, sorry I don't provide my number online. I have had a quick look, but 6090cnc is a very vague description that could refer to many different manufacturers or models. Regardless like almost all CNC machines it is most likely possible to add laser engraving capabilities to your machine. How difficult it is and how much expertise it requires will depend on the machine, the software and the hardware. I am by no means an expert on this stuff, I'm just a hobby CNCist sharing some things I've learnt. I've added lasers to 2 very different CNC machines and both times it wasn't difficult to get the laser working, but both times it involved a good amount of troubleshooting to get them working 100% how I wanted.
Hi! I want to connect 500mw laser to CNC shield v3 can you please help me..
5V DC 405nm and can I use NEJE laser module on CNC shield V3?
The Neje is based on Grbl I believe, so should be able to get that to work.
Ok but it has only two wires + and - which will connect to 5v supply on shield and for Z+ I will need MOSFET module?
@@muhammadabdullahhassan4472 you can the same setup as I show in the video with the mosfet module, but use a 5v supply instead of a 12v to suit your laser.
Ok thank you so much
you said nothing of how you set the z limit up to control the laser
When variable spindle power is enabled in the Grbl config file it swaps the z limit and spindle enable (the laser driving) pin. If you search for “variable spindle” in your config file you’ll find it and the comments there explain it far better than I have. This might not apply to some older versions of Grbl.
next time use a video of lower resolution.. i can still make out 1 or 2 things on screen that youre showing us..
The video quality is poor in sections. I am upfront about this in the description and I apologise and explain the reasons why. This was the first video I ever created/edited and I was learning as I went. The computer I was using was underpowered for the task and it crashed putting the video together. I somehow ended up losing some HD files and replacing them with low res proxies. I tried to fix it, but couldn’t work it out. I honestly didn’t expect to get 100 views let alone 10k. With hindsight I wish I had put in the effort and re-recorded the bits I lost. Hopefully the video was still of some value to you.
@@blackcatdown9560 lol. I was totally joking man. It's your video, do as you please. I thought it was good. I "like"d it. I have a CNC mill/laser engraver and cutter already, I just like watching people's projects. You can get a 3018 for like 150 bucks and laser/mill stuff at home on your desk. I LOVE how easy and cheap it is to get stuff nowadays.
@@jstagzsr all good mate. Your right it’s a golden age for the home workshop. My first grown up job was at an electronics factory and I was blown away with the equipment they had. 15 years later and equally as sophisticated equipment is available and affordable to the average Joe.