CNC Laser Engraving 8bit Shades of Grey 445nm

[JJWMACHINECO]

Hi Alan,

Here is the dual 10a relay I use and the control voltage is 5v. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I power it with the USB port to vcc & ground and then in1 & in2 I tie together and use pin 1 for turning the relays on and off in Mach3 that is. One relay powers the laser driver and the other relay powers a fan to cool the laser diode's heat sink, temp gauge, ect. and I use separate power supplies for each relay.

I never switch on & off the modulation voltage to the driver, I switch on & off the power to the driver itself. Analog modulation is the best way to modulate a driver to vary the intensity of the laser diode to engrave shades because it's a much cleaner signal. PWM is to noisy. Using PWM to engrave 8bit shades could be difficult, but this group of creative people could be the first to pull it off with PicLaser Lite that was produced by the same author of Picengrave Pro and they use an Arduino to control the intensity.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...utter-engraver

Jeff

[jh2rc97]

Thanks Jeff. I am slowly collecting parts to build the laser and circuit.

Alan

[VDX]

Hi Swami,

... yes, your machine can move really fast!

With my spindle-driven CNC-mill engraved lines starts 'wobbling' when I'll draw with 100mm/s - not really wide, but visible with the microscope ... maybe this won't be visible with dots or dotted lines in only one axial direction as with your machine?

The actual setup gives me a max. speed of 150mm/s with 0.0025mm resolution at max. 100kHz stepping frequency. With a faster controller or firmware the drivers could run with up to 300kHz, so max. 450mm/s ... but the problem would stay with the mechanical 'wobbling'.

I think, with reducing the accuracy to 10 microns or even worser and (belts instead of spindles) this could be much faster too, but is this worth the fuzz?

For higher engraving speeds I'm developing the XY-scanners -- here I'll get only 100x100 to 200x200mm marking area, but with speeds of 1m/s engraving+cutting with a 120Watt-fiberlaser or up to 10m/s engraving only ...

Viktor

[JJWMACHINECO]

Did this one today with PicEngrave Pro + Laser and analog modulation on Birch Ply. Still fine tuning the settings with our new M140 445nm from DTR.

[JJWMACHINECO]

Just finishing up a new laser diode engraver build using a Shapeoko 2, Arduino UNO, grbl shield, 445nm 9mm Nichia, 3 element glass lens, Flexmod P3 and a MA3 10bit shaft encoder tied to the Z axis to vary the modulation.

[swamidog]

Just finishing up a new laser diode engraver build using a Shapeoko 2, 445nm 9mm Nichia, 3 element glass lens, Flexmod P3 and a MA3 10bit shaft encoder tied to the Z axis to vary the modulation.

that's pretty fantastic. my last laser cnc engraving project was quesadillas for lunch on thursday.

[VibrationsOfDoom]

Funny, because where I work we have two Trotec machines, which are laser engraving superbots! We also have a Mimaki, which is good for printing full color durable inks on ANYTHING... One of the reasons I went out and bought several phone cases lol...

[JJWMACHINECO]

Funny, because where I work we have two Trotec machines, which are laser engraving superbots! We also have a Mimaki, which is good for printing full color durable inks on ANYTHING... One of the reasons I went out and bought several phone cases lol...

Post some photo engravings done on those Trotec machines. I know it's amazing what can be done with millions of dots with those superbots!

[JJWMACHINECO]

If anyone is interested on our laser diode engraver build on our Shapeoko, here is the details of it here.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Shap...t-Raster-Phot/

[DTR]

RHD has an interesting thread going over on LPF.

The Inexpensive Engraver Mod Thread