GearHeads Forum

Hi Dan:

  Nothing is put together as yet, I have a galvo cube from a yag system I picked up on Ebay,
I have it powered up and ready for an analogue signal, and I have a synrad T40 to point into it,
but I'm working on making an arduino act as a 2 axis step/direction galvo controller.
  If I can manage that, Ill be adding the laser to the cube.. Ill use a laser pointer during
development of the step/dir controller. Ive never dealt with these things before, so Im not sure
how much trouble it will be, but the math of the timing says I can do 100K points per second
from an arduino due .. in theory anyway. My Pokeys can send 125K steps / second, so it should
allow for looking at the galvo cube simply as a very fast cnc mill, only with laser instead of a
tool. So I hope anyway.. This is the galvo cube Ill be using..

Art
 

Did you set up a flying mirror XY? If not then did you do a vertical mounted synrad?
Would you email me a picture of your installation?
Dan

Dan:

Well, as you know I use a 20 watt synrad, ( well, 14 watts of one anyway.. ), and I swear by them in terms of quality,
that nice gausian profile is real sweet for engraving. But I use mine for experimenting, and Im thinking it may  become a
3d printer run by auggie in the end.. but that could take me awhile..

    I dont think Ill swap my 50watt to Auggie, as you say it does what I want in cutting, but I have a 40 watt I hope
to hook up with galvo's soon. ( I have way too many projects on the go.. lol)

  Im just trying to finish my ticker now, Ive promised a video on a bat mechanism, way too long,

Here's a photo of the ticker.. its called "An Orange Clockwork" , hopefully, its vanes get done this week for video next week..


Art

Thanks. All I need to do now is to figure out what I want to do for a laser. I don't want to modify my 100 W laser as it does all the cutting I need and  I really don't want to do engraving with it. I have a 20W synrad I can press into service but am thinking about getting one of those 10w Laser diodes.
Dan Mauch

Your probably good to go then Dan, once you figure out gettng Auto to come on, its usually pretty easy from there.

Art

I found out what I did wrong. First I hadn't set up PWM in Pokeys. After I did that I still could not get the auto on LED. So I went back over your video and saw that I missed turning on the G code Lib script. Not sure how I missed it but now I get the auto on when M3 is ran.
Thanks
Dan Mauch

Hi Dan:

  You have to go into the PoKeys setup and turn on the PWM channel you wish to use, in the  SpindleLaser scripts ( which you should have turned on
with no other spindle scripts..), youll find the line

LaserPWMChannel = p.GetInt("Channel",4);

This means the default channel is PWM #4 in the pokeys. Turn that one, and test in while in the pokeys, you should be able to get
PWM output. Once you have it running, the auto channel should turn on with an M3, and you should get a message at that time
"RT Laser Spindle enabled."

  Get the PWM running in the pokeys and let me know how it goes from there.

Art

One additional comment is that I see in Pokeys that there is a PWM setup screen. I didn't see that in you pokeys setup screen. Should that be set up and if so what settings should I use?
Dan Mauch

I have configured auggie and it runs the axies fine so I felt empowered to try to set up a laser. I don't have a laser connected to the pokey57cnc but do have pokeys running. I am trying to get it Auggie so that when in the MDI mode I enter M3 and press run that the Auto on LED comes on. I can click on the power on button and my relay energizes but I don't get the auto on  LED and I don't see the PWM  in the window dro as your video shows. I have configure everything as you video shows. I left the Engine planner the same as your video but I am not getting any PWM. That is probably why when I run M3 I don't get the auto on. I do have the engine planner PWM set to channel 4.
Any suggestions.
Dan