I can’t tell from the pictures just what lasers you guys have. I have used Banggood and Eleksmaker lasers of the 3.5 watt and 2.5 watt varieties, respectively, and the Banggood lasers have had separate connectors for 12v power and TTL modulation while the Eleksmaker lasers have had 3-pin connectors… +12v, gnd, and TTL/PWM; i.e. +12v power and TTL/PWM, with a shared ground. Here, the red and black wires are a CONSTANT (not PWM) 12v + and - power, respectively, and the yellow wire is +5v TTL/PWM modulation signal from pin 44 on the controller.
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Just this evening, I’ve used a 2.5 watt Eleksmaker to test another air-assist scheme… but used the last “shades of gray” gcode file from the “Laser engraving – not really getting great results” thread (https://www.v1engineering.com/forum/topic/laser-engraving-not-really-getting-great-results/page/9/). I’m using a MKS Gen L v1.0 board which indeed seems to be very compatible with the Mega/RAMPS combos I’ve used in the past. There’s even a replica of the AUX2 pin block containing pin 44, to which the D9 fan output has been remapped for +5v TTL modulation of the laser.
Anyway, here the machine in action…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX0XTZdkXp0
While lacking a bit of contrast, there is enough to see that the laser intensity is indeed varying with M106 Sxxx gcode commands.
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– David
