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FrozenGate by Avery

Preliminary engraving, better than expected.

M

Marksolberg

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Per your advice I purchased a 405nm laser. I got the module, driver and G2 lens from DTR. He has been extremely helpful. So far it's just mounted in an aluminum bar and clamped to my router. I can only manually adjust the focus and have no ability to turn it on and off outside of disconnecting the power. I'm using Mach3 without an actual laser gcode driver. The following cut was made by doing one continuous profile cut on a vector image.

6oH4EVb.jpg
 





Looking good. Once you get the appropriate driver you will be ablento do more.
 
Looks great so far and it's even better knowing it was done with a laser. There is a distinct "cool factor" there... :)

c
 
Does your CNC driver board have a free axis output? If so, you could use something like this
to get the power coming and going.

hJW3lcO.png


If your CNC puts out less than 12V, then you'll have to use a logic level MOSFET such as the 3055.
 
Looks very good ,what power is required in a 405nm to do that engraving and how long does it take approximately to make a work of art like that, after you have it all set up of course
 
Even a 250mW red will do it when well focused, but it is of course much slower and it depends on the kind
of wood. My 16x DVD burner laser would burn a 2x4 at 380mA when it was working. Not sure of the
actual power coming out as I do not have LPM, was using a coated glass from AixiZ
 
I purchased this unit:
12X S06J Bluray Diode In Copper Module W/Microboost & 405-G-2 Glass Lens
from DTR's site. I believe it's set at 500ma but I think the G2 lens makes a big difference.

I'm sure I have an extra axis output on my cnc driver but I was considering using an arduino with a relay and use the z axis inputs for z up and z down to turn the laser on and off.

The circular interior was engraved at 20ipm and the outer "ring" was carved at 30ipm. 30ipm causes some gaps and skips. The interior took a couple of minutes to engrave.
 
The Arduino would be a bit of an overkill IMO. Also, a MOSFET doesn't click or clunk when it activates,
draws almost no current, and doesn't produce any inductive kickback. Just my 2¢
 
I figured it was overkill but it's something I can understand. If you could point me in the right direction in accomplishing this with other electronics I would love to go that route. I'll do some research on mosfets.

Mark
 
This is cool! probably my coolest experience with laser engraving/cutting was a 10 watt IR laser cutter. I can't believe that they didn't have me wear saftey glasses though, they just told me to look away when my eyes started to hurt lol. I was too ignorant then to know how necessary glasses are with a shallow infrared laser like that.
 
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If you're using the parallel port stepper driver board with Mach3, you can just use a logic level N channel MOSFET to turn the laser module on and off with the Z axis up and down like you've said. I've done it like that before and it works fine. However, make sure you set up your Z axis speed and acceleration to be quick, otherwise Mach tends to turn the laser on, wait for a while until the Z axis is supposed to be in the correct location, then continues with the cutting, which can leave burnt spots where the laser was sitting.
 
I would have thought this would have been an easy question to answer via google but I didn't find a clear answer. Does a mosfet act like a momentary switch or does it "latch" until another pulse/signal is received?
 
It acts as a switch if the current is still applied, if not current it changes state back to off as a mosfet is a voltage controlled transistor and not a current like a usual transitor its returned state and voltage needed is whether its an pnp ..or npn type so in a way it is a latch ..used often to serve as a safety overload in lithuum ion batteries and many other applications
 
Momentary, but if you just connect it to the Z dir pin straight from the parallel port, you can reverse the "direction" in mach so that it comes on when the Z axis is moving down, since any time the Z axis is down, the dir pin will also be on.
 
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