GearHeads Forum

[quote]Is yours wired differently?[/quote]

yes I guess it is .  the k40 psu has two inputs to control the laser , first is an active low digital line to enable/disable laser power
second is a 0 to 5v analog input to control the laser power level. I have the auggie controlling both of these inputs. while its possible to " wire or "
the enable line but the analog input would need a switch to be either auggie or manual. I'm sure connecting the analog signals directly would have adverse effects. at design time I felt it best to just disconnect all the k40 controls for simplicity as the auggie laser panel had all the buttons that were needed.
one benefit of the visible loc laser is it makes mirror alignment dead easy.

[quote]Is the loc-line fitting for an air assist? [/quote]
correct
[quote]
Is it epoxied on ? [/quote]
worse ,hotmelt glue

[quote]
  I've got the lightobje ct air assist head, but it doesn't work very well with my 65 lpm aquarium pump; I think the air inlet ID is too small for the pump's pressure despite having bored it out[/quote]

I have a air assist head to too but I find it makes getting work in/out of the k40 awkward since its so much closer to the work
so now I am now using a 3d printed nozzle  from thingverse with a nice quiet airbrush compressor. seems ok
problem with plastic nozzle is it can melt catch on fire if the air is not turned on  ???

[quote="Richard Cullin"]
unfortunately just noticed that the laser test fire button is inoperative when mpg mode active , kinda defeats the purpose . defeat snatched out of the hands of victory.
[/quote]
I've been kinda offline for a while and likely missed something in this discussion...

On my stock controller K40 the laser test fire button connects to the power supply and bypasses the controller, so it shouldn't matter if there's a pokeys or mpg.  The power supply also has it's own laser test button, guessing that just parallels the one on the control panel.  Is yours wired differently?

Is the loc-line fitting for an air assist?  Is it epoxied on?  I've got the lightobject air assist head, but it doesn't work very well with my 65 lpm aquarium pump; I think the air inlet ID is too small for the pump's pressure despite having bored it out.

Kirk

built one of these as a test , it works nicely but manually
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2560096
the pictures don't do it justice the dot is really small and sharp ,easily defined .
now for a automatic depoloyment system.

main reason behind this project was to make zeroing laser to the work easier  . unfortunately just noticed that the laser test fire button is inoperative when mpg mode active , kinda defeats the purpose . defeat snatched out of the hands of victory.
now I need to build a red dot system too, unless anyone has some bright ideas

just tried it out on the k40  , it works just like a bought one ! 
0.1 mm steps @ 900mm/m  is ideal for positioning the laser  , 1.0 mm steps @1800mm/m is way too fast for the k40 bed .
0.01 might be needed for touch off on the mill .

i have set the mpg up to have 3 axis's,  each can have its own steps/mm setting stored in eeprom , with a built in setup menu.

parts arrived for pokeys end . its behaving perfectly on the bench .
decided to calibrate the mpg to match the 100 indents per turn it has .  its now set that 1 click is 0.1mm on slow and 1.0 mm on fast. will see how that works out in real life.
still waiting for lipo battery and usb charge manager to finish the job

Thx. Noted for update when Im in there.

Art

art
next time you review auggie code , no big deal.
mpg button . when you shutdown auggie with mpg active ,when restarted mpg button still shows as active but it not . you need to off/on it to get mpg going.
crosshairs.  the crosshairs don't update when mpg jogging unless you repeatedly move the mouse over the plot window

its not on the laser yet , still waiting parts for the pokeys end .so far it looks good on the auggie screen
on slow its 1.6 mm/mpg turn  @ 800mm/min max rate
on fast  its 16 mm/mpg turn @ 1600mm/min max rate
left button steps axis  xyz  right button selects speed
the nrf comms  sends  a  signed move value to the pokeys end queue as fast as the receiver sends ack packets.
nrf2401 coms is set for 4 byte packet @250kbps with ack and 4 retries.
the queue is pretty shallow so that the machine can't go too far in larlar land if you overwhelm it with fast winding of mpg knob, packets get abandoned if the queue can't keep up. the idea is when you stop turning the knob the machine stops.
I don't know if you have much knowledge of what a pic mcu is capable of but the rx end chip has these things called configurable logic cells. i'm using two of these set as d type flipflops to generate a quadrature output. I can clock this at any speed from dc to daylight (10's of megahertz anyway), one of the timer/counters is used to regulate the clock to a precise number of pulses while another sets the speed. so its pretty simple to set mpg speed / distance and its all done in hardware

Cordless MPG's.. hard to imagine a handier item than that!
  I bow in your general direction. :)


Looks like excellent work. How do you find it in operation?

Art