TB6560 - 3 AXIS Controller by Lightobject

[buildsomething]

Has anyone been able to get the TB6560 board to fire a laser using the Z dir signal?
My intention is to use the laser to cut only and NOT to engrave.

I have removed the existing Moshidraw board from the 40W CO2 Chinese laser and replaced it with the 3 axis controller from Lightobject.

http://www.lightobject.com/New-version- ... -P274.aspx

Everything is working fine except that I have not been able to map the Z-dir pulse through the card and out to the laser. I am using Mach 3 and from what I can gather, all the settings seem to be ok.
The X, Y and switches for home are all working. I even attached a small stepper on the 3 axis to make sure that I am getting a Z axis signal from the PC and that seems to be working fine.

Lightboject does claim that this board will work, but the documentation provided doesn't seem to support the claim. Maybe my settings are not correct in the MACH 3 config files or there is some unique way to configure the card.....who knows!!!

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Richard

[twehr]

I did, at one time, have that card wired into a previously-Moshidraw system and it did work (albeit NOT using the Z as a trigger - there are other ways).

Please provide a drawing of how you have it wired and I am sure we can find a way to make it work for you.

[buildsomething]

I had it wired exactly like the documentation that was provided by Lightobject as shown in the attachment.
I would like to know what settings you used in MACH 3 to map pin 7 which is the Z - dir to the card and provide an output. I have had no success so far, unless the pinout on that card is different. If you have the pinout of that particular card, that would be very helpfull.

Richard

[bdring]

It looks like he is using the direction pin of Z to fire the laser. It sounds like he is using pin 14 to do it. You must change Mach3 to use pin 14 as the Z direction pin. I don't fully understand the relay part, but that might be a form of safety interlock.

He is talking about two boards TB6560 and TGB8435. The pictures show both boards.

If you do an e-stop or feed hold, the pin may be left in the wrong state and leave the laser firing. There is probably some way to AND some pins to make it stop firing in those cases. The relay might help with that. Mach3 is very flexible on assigning functions to pins.

In general I don't know how well this will work. Mach3 puts unwanted pauses in places that don't work well for lasers. The E1P1 method may work better.

[BenJackson]

For EMC2 I implemented 3 ways to fire the laser: M3/M5 is the master control and if the "spindle" is stopped the laser won't fire. This ties in well with existing estop. I use the M3 S parameter to set "pulsed" cutting. The laser (with the S selected pulses) can be enabled either by Z<0 (the table is the U axis) or digital IO (the EMC2 equivalent of the "E1P1" you're talking about). The raster mechanism can also fire the laser (independent of the pulsing, but still tied to M3 as an enable).

The nice thing about the Z<0 code is that by setting a clearance depth of .01 and a cut depth of -0.01 and high speed plunge moves I can use any CAM program and make valid laser cutter jobs. Since I usually cut at full power and only vary speed (and pulsing) the laser power setting can just go in a preamble and never has to change.

[twehr]

In general I don't know how well this will work. Mach3 puts unwanted pauses in places that don't work well for lasers. The E1P1 method may work better.

I never used the Z axis when I had mine original 3 axis card set up. You (Bart) probably remember when I authored the E1P1 method over at CNCZone a couple of years ago. I did it specifically for the problems associated with Mach3's delays before axis movement.