My 0.99 laser - Technifor marking system

[VDX]

... depending on the interface and drivers BeamConstruct could be the best way to drive them.

I'm using the E1701D controller with my fiber-lasers and either directly from the E1701D or from an additional self developed "CNC-slave" controlled rotating and linear axes.

Actually assembling another device for a customer with a blue 6W-diode (with "beam-shaping" to get it symmetric and fine enough to be usable with the galvo-head), where the head sits above an XY stage with roughly 300x200mm moving range - and too an automatic height-sensor controlled "focus shifter" will adjust the Z-height of the galvo head for varying part heights ...

Viktor

[Jem]

I think maybe we were looking for photos, or a link, or something, so we can see what you picked up! At least, I'd like to see...

Yep, that's exactly what I was looking for

[NobleGas]

I've managed to get the control unit running; it appears the original fault may have been a loose terminal on the laser diode leads.
Trying to drive this thing with BeamConstruct isn't working as it doesn't appear to use any of the standard hardware supported. There's another variant of this thing that has Ethernet, the XY100, and it uses a print driver, but my controller doesn't have Ethernet and there's no obvious place on the controller card for an Ethernet connection. The only connection to the PC is via RS232 and I've yet to get any response over that apart from 2 characters at boot up.

[NobleGas]

After lots of digging, I've found a document that covers the programming of another Technifor unit; I tried some of the commands and have managed to get responses from the unit. So I now have some idea of the commands, but no clue as to whether this is proprietary or a standard; I've put one of the code samples from the manual below to see if anyone recognises it.

7.1.1 "Linear" marking

<Esc>PB999<CR>            Start of program number 999
<Esc>O<CR>                            Marking head return to origin position
<Esc>BB<CR>                           Beginning of a block
<Esc>MN<CR>                          Normal marking
<Esc>CC100<CR>                      No compression or expansion
<Esc>TA50<CR>                       Size : 5 mm.
<Esc>J2<CR>                           Force Code : 2 (= solemoid valves 1 and 2)
<Esc>M100 100<CR>                 Coordinates X =10 mm. and Y=10 mm.
<Esc>PO0<CR>                         Selection of character font : 0
<Esc>SC100<CR>                      Spacing between characters : 100%
<Esc>ETECHNIFOR<CR>              Text marked : TECHNIFOR
<Esc>O<CR>                            Marking head return to origin position
<Esc>PE999<CR>                      End of program number 999

7.1.2 "Circular" marking

<Esc>PB999<CR>             Start of program number 999
<Esc>O<CR>                   Marking head return to origin position
<Esc>BB<CR>                  Beginning of a block
<Esc>MN<CR>                 Normal marking
<Esc>CC100<CR>             No compression or expansion
<Esc>TA50<CR>              Size : 5 mm.
<Esc>J2<CR>                  Force Code : 2 (=solenoid valves 1 and 2)
<Esc>PO0<CR>                Selection of character font : 0
<Esc>SC100<CR>             Spacing between characters : 100%
<Esc>MC400 400 200 1800 1 2 1 1 100<CR>
                                    Marking of a circle with center coordinates
                                    X=40mm ,Y=40mm,radius =20mm.
                                    Start marking angle = 180°. Marking in
                                    clockwise direction,
                                    outside the leaning circle. Normal characters
                                    in relation to the horizontal
                                    and the vertical axis, no expansion.
<Esc>ETECHNIFOR<CR>    Text marked : TECHNIFOR
<Esc>O<CR>                   Marking head return to origin position
<Esc>PE999<CR>             End of program number 999

[NobleGas]

So after much chasing around, I managed to get a copy of the software that is supposed to work with this unit, however it kept reporting that the laser was an unknown type After a lot of investigating, including having to replace a NiMH backup battery on one of the boards and reinstating the tracks that the electrolyte had corroded through, I found that the version of software I had had dropped support for the TD410. Fortunately, the dealer in my new home country of Finland, was rather more helpful than the UK or France dealers were, and the agent managed to find an older copy of the software, no doubt on an old CD-ROM in the bottom of a filing cabinet! Of course, this didn't go smoothly, several of the files in the zip archive were corrupted; however, with the help of some fellow nerds over on the EEVBlog forum, we recovered enough of the files to get a running system, and the remaining files were common to the later release.
So I now had a system that would do everything, except for actually marking. As someone else mentioned, the laser head has an aluminium cover, under which is a sealed perspex cover, which handily allows you to 'see' the laser radiation; using a modified webcam, I was able to determine that the 808nm light was being launched from the fibre feed and was hitting the laser rod (which it turns out is Vanadate, not YAG), but absolutely nothing was coming out of the far end. Using a visible light shone into the cavity, I could see a very weird light pattern on a card placed at the OC. I removed the perspex cover and pulled the mount holding the rod, it was then obvious that the pump end of the rod had had its face 'blown off'.
The rod isn't anything easily located, it's 4x4x12mm with a bonded undoped cap attached to an undoped section of vanadate optically contacted to the doped section.
In the photos, the small clear crystal is the undoped endcap that fell off the rest of the crystal as soon as I removed it from the mount.