K40 Laser Cutter RAMPS conversion complete.

[tim_n]

I know a few people were interested in the K40 laser cutter RAMPS conversion I did.  I have now completed it (was on hiatus for a long while!) - a very long road of understanding, but it's been helped by a lot of hack time in the Cheltenham Hackspace (where I currently reside on weekdays)

If anyone else has a go and gets stuck, I'll do my best to answer questions.  Though I think the dedicated smoothieboard available from the K40 G+ community group which is more expensive but fully plug and play would now be a better route to go down for simplicity sake - it's also go substantially more processing power and memory compared to the RAMPS view of the world.

[Ben Norcutt]

Hi,

Interesting do you have more details on what you've done?

I'm in the process of upgrading a K40 to run a Re-ARM board which runs smoothie but is the same form as an arduino mega so I can use a ramps shield to provide the connections.

The K40 we bought didn't use a flat cable to connect to the end stops and x axis stepper so I couldn't use the well published middleman board so I've designed my own to make it a complete plug and play conversion.

My laser psu appears to be low signal to trigger the laser but I'm not 100% sure about that yet.

Thanks

Ben

[tim_n]

I've listed all the resources and firmware I used on https://www.cheltenhamhackspace.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=K40_Laser_Cutter

[Ben Norcutt]

Thanks for that Tim.

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 08:32:37 UTC+1, tim_n wrote:

[Ben Norcutt]

I made some mounting brackets to use for positioning micro switches to act as lid open switches

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2254726

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 08:32:37 UTC+1, tim_n wrote:

[Don Goss]

Hey Tim. Could you help me with something? I've also just finished this conversion and gotten it working. The issue I'm having is trying to tell Inkscape and the extension what needs to be rastered versus what gets vectored. If I make a circle and set the fill black, it still ends up getting vector cut. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[tim_n]

Oddly enough I was pondering this yesterday when I was trying to test the raster function.  Raster doesn't currently work on my laser.  You need to not trace path before using the turnkey plugin.  That'll leave it as bitmap.  I've not actually looked for the function to do this as yet.  If you draw a circle & just select it, it'll assume it's a raster.  If you trace path, it becomes vector.