HX40B to MACH3

[austin.mn]

I have had the HX40B for about 2 years now, it has been a good machine, doing what I require of it. But lately it has become quirky. Sometimes it just stops cutting and goes back to the home position right in the middle of the job. Other times it stops altogether, and then starts up again as if it had never stopped ruining whatever it was doing. Then sometimes it pauses waits a few seconds and restarts with shrinking whatever it was doing in half. So I figure the main controller board is out.

Instead of calling to get a new controller card I figured that now was a good time to convert it over to mach3. I generally only use the laser for doing cut outs anyways. So loosing the ability to do a good job rastering isn't really a concern for me.

I am a little confused on the wiring for this thing though. If anyone out there has any advice or has done the conversion before I would definitely appreciate the help.

Here is the new board I would like to install:
http://www.lightobject.com/New-versi...KCam-P274.aspx

Manual:
http://www.lightobject.info/download/file.php?id=87

Here are the points that I am having a tough time with.

1. The output for the laser fire is the white and turns into green wire where it goes to the 24v power supply (on the left side of the top down view) There it does something... and a black and yellow wire go from there to the Laser drive board (the main board in the picture)
So I need to figure out how to move those white wires to the new drive board and still function.

2. One of the motors is driven through the white ribbon cable on the right side of the board, which also contains the wires for the optical switches. Does anyone have any idea if I will need to add additional circuits to work the optical switches properly? I have never done anything with them before and don't want to wreck them if I can avoid it.

I have a couple more jobs to use the laser for this weekend, then I will unbolt the XY gantry and flip it over for some more pictures if they are needed.

Thank you in advance!

[austin.mn]

Anyone?

[austin.mn]

I think that I have the Laser Fire sorted. It has three wires coming out of the main control board (positive, ground, and Fire) the Fire is high, and goes low to fire the laser.

The motor and optical limits i/o on the board has a 12 pin connection. I will have to get a friend over here to help me probe them all and get them sorted. I am assuming that since there are so many connections that it will require a bit more than just plugging them into my driver board to get them to work properly. I would imagine that 4 of the pins are for the motor, 4 for power and ground to the two optical limits and then the remaining for would be for the signals from them.

The next thing for me to do would probably be to dismantle the gantry and get the numbers (if there are any) from the optical switches and check for data sheets and of course look to see if there is any additional circuitry hidden under there.

[austin.mn]

I have dismantled the gantry and got a good look at the optical switches. They are TCST 1030 and have a 330ohm resister on the board that they are mounted to. Here is the data sheet:
http://www.digchip.com/datasheets/pa...ST1030-pdf.php

I will keep looking for a good tutorial on using optical switches, if anyone knows of one, please point me in that direction.

[zax15uk]

The optical switches are easy to integrate, the 330 ohm resistor is in series with the emitter so that can be wired directly to a 5-12V source.

The output transistor can be connector to the driver board or directly to the parallel port, it may need a pull up resistor depending on your configuration.

Just ensure you get the polarity right on both emitter and collector. If you use 5V it won't damage either side if you make a mistake.

Zax.

[austin.mn]

Thanks ZAX Your the MAN. I had done some searching online and could find a few tutorials, that really didn't seem simple or give an example of how to actually integrate the switches into the break out board.

Anywho, I traced all the connections going to the 12 pin ribbon cable. Found the grounds, 5v and signal. Hooked it up and was getting a voltage of 4.9-4.7 with the blade opened and closed. Then I put a 10k pull up in between the 5v and signal. Then took a voltage from the signal and got .1 - 4.7 open and closed.

I cut the ends off a parallel cable and used it in place of the ribbon cable. In hind site I should have desoldered the ribbon connection off of the original driver board and reused it in a break out board to separate all the wires. It would have been a bit cleaner had I done that I think. But it should work as I have done it just fine.

I will be going back out to the garage to get it all reassembled in just a bit and hopefully everything works out smoothly. Boy am I excited!

[austin.mn]

Well, it was working...

I hooked it all up did some cutting and everything seemed to be working great. Then after a little more cutting it seemed to change from working great to just being frustrating.

It will no longer do all the moves of the file. It will go from 0,0 to the point where it has to drop the z (turn on the laser) then it will just sit there instead of drawing a box, then it will move to the next spot where it has to turn on the laser, and sit there again. then move back to home. It doesn't seem to matter if I change all the moves to G00 it will only do those moves.

I can jog it just fine. I tried loading a newer version of mach3. I don't know what kind of setting I may have hit that would cause it to do that though. It homes fine. Everything seems to be in order, but... its driving me nuts and I need this thing working, bad.

[austin.mn]

Well, I went back out to get it figured out. It seems that the aux step/direction outputs went bad on the board. Once I disabled the Z axis in ports and pins the movement of the gantry was back to normal. I switched to one of the general aux output pins and all was well again. Whew. So, it looks like for now it is all working well again and I can finally go to bed.

[zax15uk]

What is the aux S/D output connected to?

It may have blown from spikes/noise (during switching) or there could be a ground loop or some other issue that damaged the driver.

Are you using a common PSU for the laser and the driver? (if not, there's a ground loop potential)

Zax.

[austin.mn]

The signal to fire the laser goes through both the 24v power supply, then to the Laser power supply board. I don't know why, or what it does at the 24v board. That is just how it was originally done.

The laser was working fine, until I tried to do a raster tool path. Where it was turning on and off the laser a lot. I think that if I stick to just using it for what I have been using it for I should be fine. Just cutouts. I just need this laser to work for another year. Then I plan to build something that can handle 4 X 8 sheets and use 100w or better.

[oneeye]

Well, Marco Wong, the lightobjects owner, is my old friend and i´m a Marco consultant, you can found some posts from me ( i´m Rick737 ) in lightobjets suport forum.
Marco gave me one of this card to tests it and find how to use it.
I tested the card in a small chinese machine running Mach3.
well, is a good card, to fire laser you must get the Z dir signal from paralel port and make a small circuit.
the trick is make the Mach3 " think " that it is controling a 3 axis router, whem Z dowm form 0 the laser fire when 0 or up, stop.
The disadvantage ou using this card is the machine ll become noisy and dont work well to engraving but very well to cutting.
I have some videos of this machine running with that card,

YouTube- Rick Laser Paper cutting co2 laser

YouTube- Rick Laser Paper cutting co2 laser

I have the fire circuit, if u want a schematic email me.