I got some plywood kicking around I will try that
I can’t even guess what that’s supposed to be:) Mind posting your file? My laser is connected, I can try to print from SD just to make sure we aren’t still having comms issues.
So when selecting a profile… wood for example. Do I just let it set the power?
I’ve never used the profiles myself. I set power to Max for everything and just play with speeds. For wood, I use Max power(255) and feed rate of about 1300. I’ve never attempted 4000 feed rate, does the machine move smoothly or does it seem to be stuttering? Can you see the laser changing in intensity at all? It almost looks like there’s no PWM there, just full intensity all the time.
Post your gcode with no decimals and power at 255 with speed at 1300. I’ll try to burn it myself.
oops gcode didnt attach.
You can see it flashing so I assume its changing intensity. I am wondering if I didnt fry my driver when I plugged the 12v in backwards… It fried the 5v regulator on my mega 2560
dragon-default-wood.rar (767 KB)
I laser etch from Sd card and 1500 feed rate is pushing it. Pretty sure your machine is choking at 3000 and 4000.
It was set to 3000 or 4000 but sure didn’t seem to be moving that fast. Trying 1300 now. I wondering if I should try a simpler picture.
If you notice the top right about a 1/3 of the engraving black then it goes light. The original image is nothing like that. I looks like it’s doing that again… is it an issue with diagonal engraving?
Diagonal engraving will give you the best quality in my opinion. I think the issue is the feed rate is too high. Try the settings I suggested and we’ll go from there. A “simpler” pic won’t make a difference. The software reads the image one pixel at a time and converts color values to grayscale (0-255). The complexity of the image doesn’t affect the speed at all. The bottleneck is the serial comms between the host software and the Mega and the Marlin planner and command buffer need to be able to keep up with the selected feed rate. Like I said before, I never laser etch faster than 1500mm/min. I need to strep out so I won’t be able to test your gcode until tomorrow for comparison but I think you’re on the right track.
Will posted when this run is done.
OK, FYI I took a quick look at the dragon gcode you last posted. I don’t see any power values above 80 and the feed rate is 3000 so I can see why that wouldn’t engrave very well at that power and speed. Once you find settings that work for various materials you can save them to the different material profiles and the software should store them for next time. If we don’t resolve this then PM me with address (if you’re in USA) and I’ll ship out my spare laser driver for you to try.
I guess it would help to find an image with more lighter shades in it just so we can see some contrast. Hard to tell what’s going on with the dragon because the entire image is pretty dark. Maybe a cartoon character or something?
I am in canada. Now with it at 255 power and the slower speed it’s burning a black box with no deviations.
If you have something I mind or easily accessible post it.
Black box means no PWM. Can you try sending an M106 S3 from your host software and see what you get? Laser should turn on but will be too weak to burn the wood. Then try M106 S255 and see if the wood starts burning. I just want to confirm that your PWM and laser driver are working. If they are then go ahead and post your latest file with power=255 and speed =1300 and I’ll try to burn it tomorrow. If it works for me and your hardware is good then we need to look at your host software again.
I just did a quick google and found this:
http://forum.repetier.com/discussion/845/m106-command-timing
Interesting huh?