A bit of background first.
I was able to aquire one of those 40W CO2 Chinese lasers using the Moshidraw boards.
I am not interested in engraving only cutting, therefore the purchase of a DSP controller was out of the question

The machine worked on all axis, laser fired, etc etc.

I then purchased a 3axis board from Lightobject under the impression and documentation that this board works and has the ability to fire the laser off the Z dir command.
http://www.lightobject.com/New-version-3-Axis-CNC-Laser-Machine-Stepping-Motor-Controller-TB6560-Support-Mach3-KCam-P274.aspx

I downloaded all and any documentation that I could find and was able to install and get everything working....except to fire the laser.
The card has separate output  and I was told to map pin 7 to that output and fire the laser from there.

I am wondering if anyone has had any similar experiences with this card. 

The motor outputs that I am using are as follows:
X axis : Step - 2  Dir - 3
Y Axis: Step 4 Dir -5
Z axis: Step 6 Dir - 7

I look forward to any help
Richard

Hi Richard,

It is perhaps easiest to choose an output pin# which is available at a connector on your controller board for the Z Axis direction pin (then set this within Mach as the Z axis dir pin#).
I have pin#16 set as the direction pin and this is then connected to the laser trigger. The pin can be toggled, within Mach, active high / active low to suit you laser TTL logic input.

Hope this helps,

Tweakie.

Hello Tweakie and thank you for your reply.

This is where I think that problem lies and that is how do I map pin #7 which is the Z direction to an output.  I must be missing something here since I am totally stumped right now with MACH 3. My istepper motor inputs were pins 2 through 7 as mentioned before.  I tried assigning pin 7 to 14 but that didn't work.  I tried assigning output #2 to pin 7...that didn't work either.  My card from Lightobject has 4 outputs....pin 1, 14, 16 and 17 of which 14 was not used.  I can toggle each output and see it changing state on my scope, but I cannot for the life of me see pin 7 which is the Z dir.  All other processes are working.

I was able to fire the laser using some brains code that I wrote where the laser fired when the Z distance was between 2 very small distances.  Although it did work....sorta....the laser was still on while moving to the next cutting position.  This is walk around the problem and not a clean solution.   I am finding that the X and Y axis are moving before Z has homed and I'm not sure how to fix that one either.

Any suggestions?

Richard

Hello again Tweakie.

Well with a bit of help from Marco at LightObject, I was able to get the machine working, firing and doing what its supposed to do.
I reset everything back to ground zero and was able to set pin 7 to pin 14. The output to drive the laser was then picked up from pin 14 on the output card as well as going through the relay being turned on and off my the M3 command as a safety measure.

Although this card does not support engraving, it sure is a cheap solution to replace the Moshidraw card. 

Thanks again for your help.

Richard

Hi Richard,

If you haven't read it already you may find this thread of interest http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,12444.0.html

Tweakie.