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60Watt Install

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Hi Paul,

the power supply V- was not joined but I did join them, I will take a photo this afternoon when I get home from work. the earthing points between all the power supplies and case is good as well I checked it with a multi tester for continuity, and made sure the wires is tight so there is no loose connections.... it must be one of the $ settings as I changed all of them to the defaults as per your web page to get the laser to fire. The homing was working perfectly before I changed the $ settings, but the laser didn't fire, now its just the opposite. The LEDs on the optic sensors use to be off when the gantry was not homed and lit up as soon as it was homed. Now the LEDs stays on regardless....when I manually put the gantry to home the LED's on the sensors dim but does not go off. I don't know if one of the $ settings invert the operation of the optic sensors so that the LEDs on them is off when not in Home position and on when homed?

Quote from dancolwp1974 on May 19, 2022, 9:43 pm

I take it you know that all power supplies must have the low side of their outputs (can be called V- or GND) joined?

Quick question about this quote above because for me ground and earth is two different things but then again its in DC power you have a ground (like in a car where the negative pole of the battery goes to the body of the car) and in AC power you have a Live, Neutral and earth (where the neutral wires all go to one point and gets joined together on a busbar) and the earth goes the in this case the laser case.

So my question is do you want me to make sure there is continuity between the V- of each of the power supplies and the case of the laser? because there is no continuity between them at the moment.

Hi Wicus,

in low voltage electronics (like the 5V and 24V used by the Mini Gerbil) terms like ground, earth, 0V are commonly exchanged for eachother. Not necessarily technically correctly, but it is common.

Yes, you 100% must have the V- output of each of the DC power supplies connected to eachother, and they must be connected to the case. Sorry, I can't be clearer than that!

We produce wiring diagrams for standard K40 lasers, but obviously we don't have a standard diagram for your particular unusual combination of power supplies. Hopefully the above guidance solves the problem, but if not, then you'll need to consider:

a) drawing diagrams of all your connections for us - electrical engineers use diagrams rather than words because they can be misinterpreted! OR

b) taking extensive photos of all your electrical connections, OR

c) finding a local friend with more experience in electronic set ups

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Dan

Thank you Dan,

I will then ground all the supplies to the case and let you know the outcome

Regards

Wicus

Ok power supplies ground sorted out - didn't help with homing.

started playing with $ settings and got homing to work $4=1, $5=1 but now if I jog the gantry forward it goes backward and if I jog it to the right it goes left... so its somehow inverted.....

 

$0=10

$1=255

$2=0

$3=1

$4=1

$5=1

$6=0

$10=1

$11=0.010

$12=0.002

$13=0

$20=0

$21=0

$22=1

$23=0

$24=2000.000

$25=4000.000

$26=250

$27=2.500

$28=5

(Pwm freq 0-15)

$30=1000

$31=1

$32=1

$94=0

$95=0

$96=0

$97=0

$98=0

$99=1

$100=157.000

(x:stp/mm)

$101=157.000

(y:stp/mm)

$102=160.000

(z:stp/mm)

$110=12000.000

(x:mm/min)

$111=5000.000

(y:mm/min)

$112=5000.000

(z:mm/min)

$120=4000.000

(x:mm/s^2)

$121=3000.000

(y:mm/s^2)

$122=3000.000

(z:mm/s^2)

$130=600.000

(x:mm max)

$131=400.000

(y:mm max)

$132=0.000

(z:mm max)

ok

Hi Wicus,

I know you're mad keen to progress, but I need to strongly advise not to make changes to $ settings unless you're experienced in doing so, or advised to. We need to systematically work through setup issues rather than changing $ settings and hoping to stumble on a fix.

The change you made to $4 is not relevant or helpful. Please set it back to 0 so that it doesn't cause unexpected results down the track.

It's common for movement direction to be inverted. The simple fix is to rotate your stepper motor connections 180' on the Mini Gerbil connector - this will reverse the direction. Assuming you have the physical clearance to do so, please do so.

Once the jogging direction is correct, then let's get back to homing. The fastest way to diagnose and fix homing is to follow the instructions on this webpage. Let us know which scenario number occurs. If you now get scenario 2 (homing occurs in wrong direction), then set:

$23=0   if both X and Y homing are in the wrong direction

$23=1   if only Y homing is in the wrong direction

$23=2   if only X homing is in the wrong direction

Once the homing direction is correct, then reperform the homing test above, and tell us which scenario occurs. If you get scenario 4, please provide a close up photo of your Mini Gerbil for us to look at your limit switch connector - it may be miswired.

Thanks

Dan

Hi Dan,

I had to reinstall the Nano had work to do that had to go out....

if I change $4 back to 0 nothing happens the steppers does not engage and there is no homing at all.. just the alarm 9. With $4=1 the machine homes to the top left corner as it should without any problems, stops where it should - no banging into the chassis or grinding. if I move the the head to say in the middle of a work piece to cut a square it does all the motions of cutting the square but no firing of the laser.....still. the laser didn't even want to fire when i press the test button directly on the laser power supply. But when I unplug the wires going from the power supply to the control board on top of the machine case (where you set the power and the test fire button is) then the laser fires when I press the test button on the laser supply. I will put all the wires back into the MG3 now and then I will turn the wires around on the steppers, im pretty sure I will then have to play change the values of $3 and $23 to get it to home to the left back corner again. At the moment $3=1 and $23=0 and it homes to the correct place but I think if I do a 180 on the stepper wires it will have to change. I need the MG3 to work so I can engrave grayscale so I must get it to work - it was a bundle of money to spend with the exchange rate, I cant afford it to not have it work LOL4

thank you for your help so far I will do what you said about the $ settings and get back to you.

PS. the blue LED on the MG3 does not light up when I fire the laser

 

cheers

Wicus

Hi Wicus, the $ settings between the MG2 and MG3 product are slightly different. We apologise for that oversight. Every new cycle of upgrades do require a lot of updates on the website and this one fell unfortunately through the cracks. Please use the settings below:

$3=2, Step direction invert, mask

$4=1, Invert step enable pin, boolean

$96=1, Pause air assist when system paused: enable =1, disable=0.

$98=1, invert PWM (this caused the laser not to fire)

Let us know if the system now works as intended.

BTW you can save the settings in Lightburn to the desktop of you PC so you when you play with it and things go haywire, you can restore it to the original settings.

Cheers, Paul

Cheers, Paul awesome.tech

Hi Paul,

thanks for the update I intend to put back the MG3 today and will follow your instructions, I'm very excited to see if this sorts out the problems and will let you know soonest. In the meantime have yourself a great evening.

Cheers

 

 

Ok MG3 is back in - no luck.

the machine homes perfect, but the jogging is still the wrong way around, so i did wat you suggested and turned the stepper motor plugs 180 degrees and put them back. Now the machine homes to the right lower corner, so i adjusted the $ settings to have it home to the top left like it should, but the jogging is still wrong - it still goes back if i jog forward and still to the left if i jog right. also the laser still doesn't fire. Since i changed $98 the laser doesn't even fire with the test button on the supply. So i changed it back to $98=0 and now it fires when i press the test button....the PWM LED on the MG3 lights up(red) when i press the fire button on Lightburn but nothing happens.

Cheers

Wicus

PS.

somewhere in the $settings must be a problem as to not switch on the LO output because the LO LED never lights up,  - and I have a wire directly from the LO pin on the MG3 to the TL input on the supply and also a wire directly from the PWM pin to the IN input on the Supply and like I said the PWM LED lights up red but the LO LED and the blue led does not.....

hope that helps

cheers

Sorry for sending so many messages :-))

Ok so as you guys know my Laser has 3 power supplies, so at the beginning Paul when we started I asked from which power supply I must tap the 5volt for the Power Plug on the MG3 seeing that my power plug did not have a 5 volt of LO wires in the plug it was only 24 V+ and V- in the plug. The 5volt power supply was conveniently close to the MG3 so drew power from it to the MG3 -  that is why the laser didn't fire. After watching Jo's installation video for the, I think 100th time, I realized that the plug in the video had all the wires directly from the laser supply, so I moved the 5volt supply from the 5 volt power supply over the the 5 volt supply on the laser power supply.

When I switched on the machine the laser started firing immediately!! so i had to switch it off again and then went into the $ settings and changed it. $98=1 and $99=1. Switched on the machine and now it doesn't want to home anymore. X homes nicely by Y stepper just whines as if it doesn't have enough power to engage properly - just kind rocks forward and back and whines

Last post....YAY the machine is working!!!

Here is the settings that worked for my machine

$0=10

$1=255

$2=0

$3=1

$4=1

$5=1

$6=0

$10=1

$11=0.010

$12=0.002

$13=0

$20=0

$21=0

$22=1

$23=3

$24=2000.000

$25=4000.000

$26=250

$27=2.500

$28=5

(Pwm freq 0-15)

$30=1000

$31=1

$32=0

$94=0

$95=0

$96=0

$97=0

$98=1

$99=0

$100=157.000

(x:stp/mm)

$101=157.000

(y:stp/mm)

$102=160.000

(z:stp/mm)

$110=12000.000

(x:mm/min)

$111=5000.000

(y:mm/min)

$112=5000.000

(z:mm/min)

$120=8000.000

(x:mm/s^2)

$121=5000.000

(y:mm/s^2)

$122=3000.000

(z:mm/s^2)

$130=600.000

(x:mm max)

$131=400.000

(y:mm max)

$132=0.000

(z:mm max)

I had to adjust the Y step stick a little to get it moving correctly but now everything works!!!

Thank you Paul, Dan and the whole team at AwesomeTech

Whoo hooo

Cheers

Wicus

 

 

Great, enjoy!

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