My adventures with Auggie.

[tweakie]

I had not actually seen a 57CNC until this week and despite reading the Pokeys manual a few times there was still a lot that didn?t make any sense to me. As it turns out this clever little board virtually sets itself up and much to my surprise it was communicating with my laser equipped machine before I knew it. There seemed to be a little confusion between the Y and B axis regarding the limit switches but as they all operate as intended I did not investigate further.
Because I will be using the 57CNC to operate an existing machine using just the DB25 connection it needs to be pin compatible and I have found a couple of issues. The PWM signal is sent on pin 14 and I need it to be on pin 16 and in addition, it is active high and I need it to be active low. Despite my best efforts I cannot re-assign the PWM signal to another pin or invert the PWM polarity within the 57CNC set-up so a hardware solution is currently in progress.

Tweakie.

[tweakie]

Now I appreciate that this is bit unorthodox but I have cut into a ribbon cable connector and using an opto-isolator I have inverted the PWM signal and transferred it from pin 14 to pin 16.
To be on the safe side, I am limiting the current drawn from the 57CNC pin 14 to around 5mA (which is sufficient to drive the LED in the PC123 opto-isolator) and the Vcc for the opto-transistor is provided by the pull-up resistor in my laser psu input.

A simple, quick and in-cable solution which requires no additional power source.

Tweakie.

EDIT:  Please see post #8 for an update on this.

[tweakie]

It?s alive ! 

This is my first test run with Auggie and the laser powered up.

Tweakie.

[tweakie]

A couple of observations ? not problems.

1) The splash screen is not totally erased when the laser screen opens.
2) Auggie crashes when loading an image file using the AUGS button.

This only happens with the workshop WinXP computer, neither issues happen on a Win10 computer. As said it is not a problem to me as image compilations would not be made on the workshop computer and the remnants of the splash screen can be removed by changing to the default screen and back again, if I was really fussy.

Tweakie.

[ArtF]

Hi Tweakie:

  You know, its a testament to your skill that you got a laser burning an engraving
without a single question on Auggies internals. I hadn't seen that done before.
Congrats, thats a real achievment, Im pretty impressed. The burn looked good too!

  Ill be interested in how you find the true 3d burning when you figure it out..

  I dont run XP anymore, but Ill look into the problem and see if I can see an issue I can
correct there. Same with images, they should load fine, though they are a bit memory
hungry.. Auggie is a beast I kinda tame to do what I need at any given time, few of us
are users of it, but I kinda like it when I run it. Im in the design process to make it do
3d printing by laser, but Ill wait to see how that works out..

Yell as you get into trouble in Auggie, but based on your progress so far I guess
I needn't worry..

Art

[tweakie]

Thanks for the kind words Art but I am really not that smart ? I watched your video?s and read many of the Members posts here before I even attempted to get Auggie working 

Tweakie.

[tweakie]

It is now evident to me that there are just sooo many different settings and adjustments that can be made within Auggie that it could take some while to achieve the optimum results for any particular process or material.

Here are a couple of attempts, using different settings, with the same 8 bit image.

Tweakie.

[ArtF]

I like all three. , the circular one is kinda nice.

  In Auggie your free to make any GCode shapes, so sine waves, hilbert curves and such in Gcode
would all create interesting back pattern shapes in the burned photo. I suspect its easy to come up
with texturing patterns as well. 

  As to settings, there are a lot. Then there's macros you can write to do special things you
may want. Your Gcode can call macro's or even have C script in it, so may special processes
can be automated. Auggie is nothing if not versatile. With versatility though, comes 
complexity so it can be a bit much to figure out all the ins and outs. ( To be honest I'm still
figuring them out myself.. I only burn with Auggie in the winters).

  How do you find the "only burn with g1 motion" feature? Its my favorite thing with laser.
Any suggestions to make it better? Does your power vary properly during acceleration to
smooth out burn marks typically found in non-corrected motion? Ill be back at Auggie when
Vexx is released so feel free to plug any suggestions you may have.

Great work!, keep showing us the results, I think your way ahead of the curve.

Art

[tweakie]

Hi Art,

Yes indeed sir the ?only burn with G1 motion? works very well and of course, avoids codes such as M62/M63 etc.
So far I think I have only had the acceleration and deceleration zones outside the work area but my machine has an LED which varies in brightness with the PWM signal. I can observe the tickle pulse during the Accel / Decel zones and the PWM tracking up and down within in the image areas.
I have had to re-think my earlier idea of inverting the PWM signal using an opto and reverted to using a transistor which exhibits a much smaller propagation delay. The delay in the opto on-time was noticeable from close-up inspection of the work.

It?s going to take me forever to learn all the features of Auggie (I have been using Mach for over 10 years and I still don?t know the half of that) so I don?t think I will be making any suggestions for improvements any time soon.

Tweakie.

[ArtF]

Tweaky:

  Ill make note to check the PWM, I thought it was invert-able. Of course simply inverting the power demand would invert it,  I cant recall if I allowed that to happen. Ill check at next opportunity. Sounds like a simple software fix..

  So long as your having fun with it, it fulfills its purpose. It was written to be a general experimenters
CNC controller. I'm one of those who is always playing with a new idea, usually half baked and failing,
but hey, M3's driver came from such half baked idea's ,so I needed such a platform, Mach3
did it for me for over a decade, but that missing PWM capability made Auggie necessary. Its Gcode
isn't as complete as Mach3's, but its scripting and macro capability blows M3 out of the water for
experimentation involving weird or unknown devices. 

  More will be added to it as I play with a few idea's this winter.

Have fun,
Art