Couple of funnies...
Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:40 am
I have finally got back to this CNC Laser project and have made some good progress. When I left off about a year ago, I was having no luck getting my PWM power control figured out. I was successful getting variable power fixed only to find that I was engraving mirror images. Y axis was reversed. Fixed that. Vector engraving is going well so I took another stab at raster engraving images. I have made some significant improvements in the past few days. I will post some pics in the next few days to get some critical observations and recommendations. In the meant time....
I have noticed 3 things that seem odd. The first one is kind of scary.
I found that if I set my PWM period down in the 2Khz range my laser turns on at very very low power (won't touch a piece of paper) immediately when I issue an M3 command. No movement nor FIRE button required. If I move or FIRE manually, the laser fires at the called for power. The machine works fine otherwise. I was able to vector and raster ok because the extremely low power doesn't have any affect on the media. When I set the PWM freq at the default Engine/Parameter value of 0.0002 (5KHz) it doesn't exhibit this unexpected result. Once I identified the culprit while using at 500Hz I went back to the default of 5K, verified proper operation and then incrementally stepped the freq down until it failed to work "properly". I think that was someplace south of 3.3Khz but just don't recall exactly. Sorry, I should have taken better notes. I can go back and replicate this with pen in hand if that helps.
I discovered the second funny as a result of the first one. When I use the AUG function, generate code and execute it through completion, I noticed that the laser stays on. Auto on still blinks. FIRE turns works at the called for power %. Any subsequent move lights the laser off. At the end of the gcode file there is an M30 to end the code before the M5 to disable the laser and then another M30. If I knew where the post processor was I could probably sort this one out by myself.
The last one I haven't really investigated much. When I set Setup in Metric to TRUE in the Engine/Planner I got some very strange results. I will look into this a bit more when I have more time to document the effects accurately. Right now I just home and then issue a G20 command to get to INCH units. Works fine.
Mark
I have noticed 3 things that seem odd. The first one is kind of scary.
I found that if I set my PWM period down in the 2Khz range my laser turns on at very very low power (won't touch a piece of paper) immediately when I issue an M3 command. No movement nor FIRE button required. If I move or FIRE manually, the laser fires at the called for power. The machine works fine otherwise. I was able to vector and raster ok because the extremely low power doesn't have any affect on the media. When I set the PWM freq at the default Engine/Parameter value of 0.0002 (5KHz) it doesn't exhibit this unexpected result. Once I identified the culprit while using at 500Hz I went back to the default of 5K, verified proper operation and then incrementally stepped the freq down until it failed to work "properly". I think that was someplace south of 3.3Khz but just don't recall exactly. Sorry, I should have taken better notes. I can go back and replicate this with pen in hand if that helps.
I discovered the second funny as a result of the first one. When I use the AUG function, generate code and execute it through completion, I noticed that the laser stays on. Auto on still blinks. FIRE turns works at the called for power %. Any subsequent move lights the laser off. At the end of the gcode file there is an M30 to end the code before the M5 to disable the laser and then another M30. If I knew where the post processor was I could probably sort this one out by myself.
The last one I haven't really investigated much. When I set Setup in Metric to TRUE in the Engine/Planner I got some very strange results. I will look into this a bit more when I have more time to document the effects accurately. Right now I just home and then issue a G20 command to get to INCH units. Works fine.
Mark