[hububalli]

hello again allall,

so I am actually doing the conversion now, as I write this in fact. its amazing how long its taken to find the time to do this. On the plus side my reprap works perfectly now.

At the moment I have stripped out the old moshi board and am in the process of conecting up the ramps board. its all quite crude at the minute, I will make some kind of interface board in the future so its just plug and play once it works. I will post some pictures later on.

[buddydog]

Sorry guys. I have been really really swamped with work. Haven't even had time to do anything more with my laser cutter. But I am keeping an eye on the thread and am ready to support whenever you guys are ready to install. And yeah, what happened to Rolf?

Life happens while your making other plans. A few months back I started a CNC milling machine project, then my son found a boat for me to buy with two dead Yamaha 250 horse engines so now it's a rush to get those engines going. Got 1 running good and hopefully I'll get the connecting rods torqued (had to replace 3 of the six pistons and super hone the scarred up cylinders) on the other one done today and then hopefully get it running too sometime this week. Then trailer the whole 11,000# rig to the water for testing. Ugg!
So basically airplane project, CO2 laser, CNC milling machine, 500 horse power project - all dead in the water. Oh yeah family time. Anyway looking very forward to more from your build.

[hububalli]

Well that was a lot easier than expected!

I took about 4hr30min to do and it all worked first time. Granted it is all a bit hacky at the minute but I will tidy that up once I have done a few more test cuts and made a new front panel. There are a few pictures below of what I have done, I will be ordering the bits later on today for the interface board and front panel. I will be adding a water flow sensor and a few extra switches to control the extractor, water pump and led lighting I fitted. I would suggest to you all that you just do it, its pretty simple to do and the reward is massive. I wish I had more than 3 colours in small guage wire though, as you can see I had to use the same colour for various connections, would have preferred to have used different colours for each signal.

If you follow the wiring diagram it is all pretty straight forward. I had to use a multimeter to check which way round the ribbon cable was orientated as its not obvious in the diagram. I also had to just guess which way round the Y axis connector is supposed to be but it wouldn't have done any harm if it was the wrong way round, the stepper would have just behaved strangely. This might help if you get confused by the different naming schemes on the steppers.

1A = XA+
1B = XA-
2A = XB+
2B = XB-

I have only been using it a few minutes and its already way better. Being able to move the axis around is great and it no longer grinds at the far end of each axis if you go too far. By far the best thing is the ability to control the laser power, it feels much more like a proper laser cutter with this feature. The two test fires were done directly via the Ramps. First was 20% power 5ms and the second was 100% 20ms.

[hububalli]

By the way your project list is something to be proud of! Think that will keep you busy for quite a while. Must be some boat to have two engines that size!

[buddydog]

By the way your project list is something to be proud of! Think that will keep you busy for quite a while. Must be some boat to have two engines that size!

It's a Grady White Marlin 300 (basically a 30' powerboat with a 10' 6" beam.

Great work on the cutter! Wish Rolf and Retro would check back in. I'll get back to all my CNC stuff when the weather turns in two months. I'm not proud of the list actually but it is "my" list and nothing to but try and get it done before the bucket catches up with me.

[Rolf_K]

[QUOTE=hububalli;1737770]Well that was a lot easier than expected!
Sorry for the hiatus, been busy working on my quadcopter(s).
Great pictures you posted, I guess to schematic you referred to is this one: http://reprap.org/mediawiki/images/f...4schematic.png
How about some information regarding the readout. My readout cables are not oriented like yours and one is twisted, is that correct? (See picture)
Hope you will post a synopsis of your work with pertinent links, especially regarding the firmware and software.

[hububalli]

I wasn't planning on going into much detail of the installation as it was just as specified in the diagram but am happy to go into detail about it if that's helpful to people. I will take a few more pictures and do a write up of the install.

I'm still messing around with the firmware and software and was planning on writing about that as its been a bit of a hastle to get working properly today.

Did my first proper raster engraving today, excellent results. Pictures to follow!

I have a different display to you I think so can't really comment. Have you tested it out? They are keyed so you only have two choices, if you get it wrong it just won't work, it won't do any damage.

[Rolf_K]

I wasn't planning on going into much detail of the installation as it was just as specified in the diagram but am happy to go into detail about it if that's helpful to people. I will take a few more pictures and do a write up of the install.

I'm still messing around with the firmware and software and was planning on writing about that as its been a bit of a hastle to get working properly today.

Did my first proper raster engraving today, excellent results. Pictures to follow!


I have a different display to you I think so can't really comment. Have you tested it out? They are keyed so you only have two choices, if you get it wrong it just won't work, it won't do any damage.

Congratulations, I am so glad you got everything working and that you are willing to write a guide for us that is not quite as clever.
Seems like every time I turn around I run into some kind of problem. In my previous post, I question the ribbon cable for my LCD readout, sure enough one of connectors were installed incorrectly, it was flipped. Picture below shows the correct placement:
Attachment 288152

[maianh13]

Help me : Muratec cnc laser punch press flexilaser - 1544-18 stations - 1.5kw.

[hububalli]

So I have had a bit of a set back. I shorted my power supply so that's dead now. Need to take that out and fix it before I can carry on. I am just getting a flashing screen on the RAMPS so I looks like the power supply is turning it self on/off. Will swap out the caps/diodes and a few others bits and see how it goes. The quality of the components inside is pretty low so I might replace a few other bits too.

It happened when I turned the machine on after I had mounted the RAMPS in the laser. The wiring is all correct as it worked a few minutes before I had mounted it. Further investigation is required!

[Rolf_K]

I saw somewhere that they recommended the poly-fuses on the RAMPS be removed.
Did you remove yours?

[hububalli]

Yes I did, you need to remove Diode D1 as well so the voltage doesn't get regulated down to 5v. I have started writing the instructions and taken a load of pictures. I will add it here soon.

I looks like the power supply problem was caused by some weird earthing between the Arduino/RAMPS and the power supply. It is mount with plastic spacers but the screws are metal, so it was being connected to the chassis of the laser. I will use some double sided sticky foam to attach the Arduino to the chassis instead so its completely isolated. I have read a fair bit about dodgy earthing/Neutral situations with the older power supplies but I thought that had been resolved, guess not! I will check the Live/Neutral configuration as apparently they can be reversed (Neutral having the inline fuse for example). Both the L and N cables are Blue so I am not surprised they might get swapped over.

[hububalli]

Traced the problem down to a blown capacitor, nice little burn hole in the top! I don't have that match in my box of tricks so have ordered a few. Should be back in action in a few days

[Rolf_K]

I am having a terrible time trying to install the driver for my Arduino MEGA on my Windows 7 64-bit computer. The cursor freezes as soon as I plug it in. :-( , And there seems like it is no way that I can install the driver.
I have been on the Internet for three hours this morning trying to find the problem. I have probably a Chinese knockoff with a counterfeit chip, because I only paid about $10 for it but I am hesitant to pay $40-$50 for one, if I don't have to.
Has anyone got the answer to this?

[Joeee83]

Hi, my first post was not yet approved - somehow?

Currently installing the Marlin in my K40 too. I'm having problems with the steppers. How are the jumpers below the stepper driver set? TIA

EDIT: They are set to 1/16 step depending on the stepper driver used. For the DRV8825 its Mode0 LOW Mode 1 LOW Mode2 High. For the A4988 that would be HIGH HIGH HIGH. I can confirm this for the DRV8825.

The cursor freezes as soon as I plug it in. :-(

That sounds really bad! Almost like the board shorts out your 5V on the USB to GND. Is your PCB laying on something that is conductive? Change that...
Turn the PCB around an look at the four solder joints for the usb connector.. shorts?
Try to measure conductivity at between the 4 connections while not having it plugged into the computer.
My Mega Board was delivered today an came with a counterfeight usb chip installing drivers from CH341SER.zip helped me out.

[Rolf_K]

That sounds really bad! Almost like the board shorts out your 5V on the USB to GND.

Could it be something else?
Both LEDs are illuminated at normal brightness.

[Joeee83]

I'm still having problems with my steppers. Connecting the steppers to the board and trying to move them around by using the menu doesn't work.
I can tell the steppers are ok, because when connected to a different controller that uses the same drivers (DRV8825) they can move around as supposed. So the wires for the phases are in the correct order.
Also tried to resolder the boards didn't make it any better. Anyone got a hint? Does the menu moving work in the firmware?

@Rolf_k
shorted data lines?
what about opening the device manager first and looking at it. perhaps it will find the arduino?!

[Rolf_K]

@Rolf_k
shorted data lines?
what about opening the device manager first and looking at it. perhaps it will find the arduino?!

Plugged Arduino into my laptop with Windows 7 Home Edition and everything is seems to be working great. :-)

[Joeee83]

I also advanced a bit.
My cables are fine. In order to get the thing kind of working i went into the motion menu and lowered the acceleration values. Now there is only one fault left. My left endstop is not perfectly recognized. The signal looks right on the scope. The top end switch (light barrier) is working fine.
When the endstop is triggered the stepper of that axis will only move in one direction. Somehow one of the axises moves towards it, one moves away from it. The tricky thing about this is when wanting to move the motor in the direction it doesn't want to move it makes the sound like it is moving. So you can feel and hear but don't see it moving. That made me think it's not properly connected.

[hububalli]

I can confirm that this does work directly on the machine and via PC. When you turn the machine on they do not work properly until you have homed the axis. Once you have done this they work as expected when using the menus.