Laser cutter with tb6560 board - so far going well

[geekinesis]

Update

I have fitted a new tb6560 3 axis board to my laser. I substituted motors with 1.2A rating and higher torque.

This has resulted in a quieter/smoother operation. No more screaming laser machine!

I realised that most of the noise from my laser in the past was coming from the rails and bearings. This was mainly due to the timing belts being quite loose. The original steppers struggled and lost steps if the timing belt was too tight (or what I would consider to be a "normal" tension)

So, with new motors I can tighten the belts and cut down on vibration and noise considerably. The laser is now relatively silent in operation.

The last task is to rewire the laser on off to the board relay permanently.

I am now avoiding newlydraw.

I create my designs in illustrator or inkscape, outputing EMC gcode directly from inkscape using gcodetools. I have to edit the gcode slightly to add the laser on/off M3 M5 codes but I think I can write a post processor to do this eventually.

It took a while to work out the optimum settings for the tb6560 board as the motors were initially very noisy and vibrated the whole machine during cutting.

The only problem is the motors make a hissing sound when idle. But I think this has been reported by other users so is probably normal for this board?

I dont have any limit or home switches connected yet, but I think I can wire the existing lasers home switches directly to the inputs on the board?

[maralb]

hello,
possible to know where acquired motors 1.2 degree??? which type you have taken?

[geekinesis]

hi
They are nema 17 motors 1.2 amp 1.8 degree step 3.5 volts. They were from a british supplier