OK, thanks Art - I'll press on and see if I can put into practice all the information in your video that I have now watched a few times!

Mike

Progress!! I have been jogging axes - charge pump works and jogging is sounding really good. However, I still cannot change the frequency and although it starts as showing 40000Hz, when I jog the axes and go back to the 'Pulse Stats' I get the screen below. Once again blank but now showing 25000Hz. 25000Hz is what I want as the encoders on my servos are only 200 lines and my motors cannot make use of higher frequencies but should that stop me from selecting higher? I didn't think Darwin would be aware of such things.

Mike

Hi Mike:

  Yes, its a graphics non compatability for some reason it seems. Weird the way its intermittant on some systems and doesnt show up at all in others.
Ill take a look to that code and see if I can figure out why. I may be stressing the cpu too much so its timing out on the display or something.
Sounds like youll be able to tune it in though..

Art

HI Guys:

  New version of the installer for Darwin with dependancies added. Dont install unless you need to, there is no update in here other than to make the installer work better.

Thx
Art

Hi Guys:

 First laser engraved photo done with Darwin. Darwin sent 40 levels of power ( of 100 possible) via
serial dataclock transmission while engraving at 7000mm/min.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/118339423221700707274/albums/6054479007323314049/6054479008542443554

 Theres a video on the page as well. Im still really just developing a method for darwin to do engravings or pin
punching.. I find surprisingly that my servos have a terrible following lag only noticable because of the lasers ability
to fire instantly on any step command at any power. SO if I cut in both directions, I get a "Carrot on a stick" problem
where the laser fires on the step pulse, but the servo doesnt get there for another 10mm's of travel.
  So Ill either have to put in a following error calculation for slow servo's.. or replace them if I wish to engrave in both directions.
Cutting isnt so much an issue. The photo shows quite an impressive quality for laser on melemine , and at least verifies that
adding a simple arduino, and hooking up 4 wires to the breakout board allows a large amount of laser control..

Art

Update:

  Turns out my servos were badly out of tune, with a good increase in PID, the system can engrave bidirectionallly.
So next version of Darwin will have 3 more system outputs, a StepFlag, which pulses its output on any motors step..
, a data clock which runs at kernal frequency, and a Data line matched to the clock.

  Ill publish the code for the laser control panel , in Darwin you now just set a register named "laser" to 1 to make the
system run in laser mode. Laser mode also corrects for acceleration and deceleration to keep laser power the same no matter
what the speed.

   I know only laser users will care about making a panel, but the outpus may come in handy for other experimenters to use.

Art

thanks art this going to be very helpfull

Thanks Art, I look forward to trying your setup, allbeit at a much slower feedrate  (4500mm/min with my steppers and ballscrews) when details become available.

Tweakie.

Hi Tweakie:

 Yesterday I added the implementation of M62, M63 as Steve added them to Mach4. ( Bumped up specifically to
thank you for all your work I hear. ). The next Darwin should work with those commands. While they are handy
for laser on/off, Im finding having the laser trigger on any step pulse VERY handy. It means I can leave the spindle on
and not worry about burning things.

  Anyway, next version of Darwin will be a few days as Im adding the laser control parameters into the plugin in a way
thats more usefull than the hobbled bunch of things I currently do to make an engraving. More on that on release.

Thx
Art

Wow ! - it all seems to be coming together faster than I anticipated. 

Thanks Art.
Thanks Steve.

Tweakie.