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1

General Mach Discussion / Laser not firing after being replaced

« on: October 01, 2023, 01:55:25 PM »

Hi all,

Recently my laser stopped firing on jobs and I figured it had just reached the end of its life. I ordered a new one from amazon, hooked it up and it tested fine with the test button on the power supply. However it's still not firing when running jobs and I'm not sure what's going on.

The power supply was unplugged while installing the new laser and all the wires are in the correct position. I use a small script in mach3 that triggers the laser on output 4 to fire when it is under -.01. That is working normally and output 4 shows as active in diagnostics when the laser is under -.01. I first tested the voltage on the mach3 usb board and the power supply and am getting 4.45/4.14V when not being triggered and 4.55/4.38V when triggered so a signal is reaching the power supply. I thought the power supply itself might be the issue and replaced that with no change.

Now I'm going through my entire setup trying to find the issue and I'm running out of ideas.

I've been using this setup for 3 years now with no issues after TPS gave me a script on this post https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=43312.msg280025#msg280025 And the script is

Code: [Select]

'turn output ON
If GetDro(2) < -0.01 Then
ActivateSignal(OUTPUT3)
End If

'turn output OFF
If GetDro(2) >= 0.0 Then
DeactivateSignal(OUTPUT3)
End If
While digging into this I realized that I tweaked the code to output 4 for some reason and the wire at the board is on output 3. I honestly have no idea why it is setup this way and can't understand how it even worked. I have changed the script back to output 3 and it shows as active in diagnostics but the laser still doesn't fire. I also changed the code back to output 4 and moved the wire to output 4 on the board as well with no change.

Currently everything is back to the original state, code is set to output 4 and the wire is on output 3. I'm still a complete novice at wiring everything and using mach3 so please forgive any dumb mistakes.

Thanks

2

General Mach Discussion / Using mach 3 to control a laser and need to disable it whentraveling

« on: June 27, 2020, 10:00:13 AM »

Hi all,

I've been using mach 3 for the last year to run my laser and the only issue I have is that the laser runs continuously while traveling. I use it to create stencils for my work and it occasionally wrecks some of the more detailed parts. I use the m7/coolant option to toggle the laser and am wondering if it is possible to configure mach 3 to disable/enable the coolant when Z is at a specific value. I've seen a few things on using the VB script editor but I'm not sure if that is the correct option.

My settings on ports & pins are output #3, port 3, pin 1 and the coolant is set for #3 on the spindle tab. I would like to toggle it so that coolant is on when Z is at or below -0.01 and off when it is at or above 0.00.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

3

General Mach Discussion / Limiter switch not being detected

« on: October 22, 2019, 02:21:12 PM »

Hey all,

Last weekend my usb controller board finally failed for good and needed to be replaced. One of the pins on the usb port snapped and I am unable to resolder it back on. Thankfully I had a replacement board ready to go as I knew it was failing but kept putting it off because I was using a mark 1 board and the cnc-usb software. Both are no longer supported so I couldn't just swap things out.

I followed the setup instructions https://www.buildyourcnc.com/item/electronicsAndMotors-electronic-component-breakout-Mach3-USB-Board to wire up the new board and the motors are working fine. I also have the SPM setup in mach3  and it is working correctly as well.

However I am unable to get the board to detect any signal from the limit switch no matter what I do and I have almost no experience with wiring anything beyond what I have done so far. Image 1 shows the original board and the wiring setup on it. The red box is the wires on NO and green box is all the common wires running to just one port.

I wired the NO connections in the exact same way as the common wire and plugged it in to input 1. I also have a 12V power cord running to the board as well and I tested it to confirm that it is outputting 12V correctly. When that did not work I pulled everything apart and plugged in X-- into input 1 and avi- and it was still not recognized. I pulled up the diagnostics tool and it is not registering anything on input 1 or pin 1. Finally I held a multimeter to input 1 and avi- and get a small reading when I toggle the switch so I think the signal is going through.

All the limiters were working normally before switching to the new board so I know the existing wiring is set properly. I read tweakies guide on wiring the cnc and have been searching for answers but can't figure out what I did wrong.

Any help would be appreciated because I'm out of ideas and starting to get antsy as work in my shop is backing up.

Thanks
Paul