The Laser Project.

[Greolt]

Not sure I would call it a serious bug.

A bit of an anomaly, but does no harm that I can think of.

Greolt

[Dan13]

If you had Input #1 controlling something else which you wouldn't expect to get triggered while using the plugin it could get not pleasant.

Dan

[Tweakie.CNC]

Hi Greg,

Dan is on the right track.

You mentioned earlier having the Digital Trigger and an Output both configured to the same port and pin and both Enabled at the same time. Conflicts can cause problems such as you are describing and which I am sure you are aware of.

This is exactly why I suggested using two different profiles Raster / Vector.

Tweakie.

[Greolt]

You mentioned earlier having the Digital Trigger and an Output both configured to the same port and pin and both Enabled at the same time.

If I did, I didn't mean it.  Not a good idea to have to things assigned to one pin.

However with some poking around I discovered that M11P0 and M10P0 will activate and deactivate the Digital Trigger.

So there is no need for a separate profile for engraving and vector cutting.

Both vector cutting and engraving would both use Digital Trigger.

In fact if you edit the M10 and M11 macros then I suppose you could drop the P0 or P1 altogether.  Just use M11 and M10.

Greolt

[Tweakie.CNC]

Funny thing is, I had been using the plugin via Output1 active low.  This worked fine and I had been engraving the last couple of days that way.  As soon as I set it to active high it no longer worked.  Go figure.

Hi Greg,

So, is this problem resolved now ??

Tweakie.

[Greolt]

Yes as I said said above M11P0 and M10P0 work fine with Digital Trigger, so resolved it is.   

At least for me.  Everything is working great. Thanks.

Funny that the engraving plugin would fire the laser with Output1 active low but not active high.  Maybe I overlooked something.  Wouldn't be the first time. 

Greolt

[Tweakie.CNC]

Hi Greg,

I am pleased you have got it all working OK now.

Don't forget the pictures.

Tweakie.

[Greolt]

The internet is a wonderful thing and I have learned more from forums like this one that I ever did at school.

However one of the small frustrations is that there is always misinformation mixed in with the good.

It is my strong desire to not add misinformation, particularly to this most informative thread of Tweakie's.

So I need to clear up what I have said about outputs used by the engraving plugin.

What testing has told me is that the plugin uses Digital Trigger only.   The really odd thing is that it uses Digital Trigger even when it is disabled.

My previous belief that it could also use Output1 was because it worked when Digital Trigger was disabled and Output1 was enabled.

But it was not using the enabled Output1, it was in fact using the disabled Digital Trigger.

If you look at the pic of Ports and Pins, you will see that I had both outputs set to port1 pin9. 

Not a good idea, but I had it set thus, as I was swapping back and forth to try and see what was going on, in the mistaken belief that disabling one and enabling the other was sufficient to change the output.  WRONG.

Don't know what to think of that.  A bug or my lack of understanding as to how Mach works.

Now the important thing after all this, is that I was wrong.  It is NOT sufficient to just disable an output in this case.

As Tweakie said, Digital Trigger is the correct output to set up for the engraving plugin.

Sorry for my misleading posts and I hope this clears it up.

Greolt

[Greolt]

Now to hopefully get this back on track, here is an attempt at engraving.

The wood is Huon Pine.  Rather than blacken, it more sort of ate it.  As if I had cut it on the router.

I have an awful long way to go on this learning curve.

Greolt

[Tweakie.CNC]

HiGreg,

Nice leopard.

On your learning curve you will find that some woods will produce quite a black image whilst others just get 'eaten' 

Keep posting the pictures.

Tweakie.