Retrofitting my Chinese laser

[jmurphycnc]

Hi Guys.

I have a cheap chinese 40w c02 laser. The control board gave up the ghost a couple of years ago, and I never tried to replace it.

I was wondering if anyone here has replaced their boards with a non stock board to drive the laser?

If so, do you have any recommendations for a particular board to use?

Thanks for your consideration.

John

[Amazon [Bot]]

I'm still using the PS that came with my K40 unit but I have used this site and had good luck.

http://www.lightobject.com/Laser-Power-Supply-C15.aspx

[ArtF]

Hi:

  Theres a thread on the forum on users configuring their K40 lasers to run on a CNC57 board and using Auggie to run it.
Theres a bit of a learning curve, but youll find schematics and such users like YanvrNo used for his.

Art

[Mooselake]

A number of K40s have been converted to smoothieware, and it's a pretty active topic on the G+ K40 group.  I have a replacement controller sitting here for my K40, although other issues (including a a tendency to procrastination) mean it hasn't been installed yet.  There's a G+ group for this conversion board, lots of information and help if you want/need it.  K40s used a number of different power supplies, but with most of the more recent versions this could be close to a drop-in alternative.

People also use GRBL and arduino based controllers, some of them fairly inexpensive.  Like Art said, Augie's an excellent alternative.

Which controller (Moshii or Nano) do you have?  I might have an M2Nano, commonly used with Corel Draw, available "soon" complete with dongle etc.  A recent medical procedure has put me on a 10 pound lift restriction so I hope to pare down the limited weight project list in the near future.

Kirk

[Stojan]

I know this is an old post but if anyone else has a K40, chinese laser. I can vouch for the mini gerbil upgrade. Its pretty much a drop in replacement board. Depending on whether or not you have a ribbon to your X drive three wires need to be plugged in. Your done in about 5 minutes.

You can toss their software in the rubbish and download laser web and do some nice things with it.

[Mooselake]

The mini gerbil board, alas, costs almost as much as the rest of the laser.  I imagine it has to do with small production volumes rather than profittering, but it's still spendy.

Since the original discussion the M2nano's protocol has been reverse engineered (not only do the chinese rampantly copy our stuff they also pirate each others, hence the stupid dongle dodad) and you can run the machine dongleless with K40Whisperer from scorchworks (it's free, although there are people selling it on eBay and elsewhere to those who are weak in the search-fu)

And I still haven't installed my controller board, but I'll blame a lot of that on not making it to the Mooselake Manor for over a year and half because of knee surgeries and a no-step MLM south in Florida.  Maybe some procrastination and ADD in there too.  Mrs Moose wants to stay here until the CV situation dies down so we're not leaving next week as planned

Kirk

[Stojan]

The mini gerbil is $80 usd, that's not so bad in comparison to the cohesion3d board which is $199 usd. The K40 is a totally different laser with the new board in it...

[Mooselake]

You're right, I was looking at the super gerbil.  C3D's really raised its prices, think my prototype board was around a hundred bucks.  The original controllers seem more designed to keep the other guys from copying them than to see what they could get out of the amazingly cheap (last time I looked, pre CV, they were $300US delivered) K40s.

If chamnit finds the time to make the official 32bit grbl releasable expect a wave of sub $40 32 bit boards like the E3 mini.  Seems like there's a use for all those smartphones after all (besides increasing EMS and hospital income when they walk around staring at them), made high power MCUs super cheap and less than the 328 based controllers.  Didn't seem that long ago when a AT90USB1280 Printrboard was $140...

Kirk

[Stojan]

I hear what your saying, but you know how it is Profit before anything sensible. Makes me remember the Ferengi in StarTrek... Yes I am that OLD lol...

[Mooselake]

I watched the original star trek when it was new, although it was quite a few years until I saw it in color.  DS9 is a newcomer...

Kirk