So I just got done converting an old beat up and not printing correctly anycubic i3 mega 3d printer to a diode laser. I decided on smoothie as the firmware and mostly using lightburn with it. You will also need the stepper smoothing boards for each stepper as the mks sbase outputs a jerky waveform to the steppers. This board and firmware should work great for any other type of laser as well. Not as nice as the cohesion3d board but a much better option for cheap builds and has a lot of the same features once you sort out your wiring and configuration
Control board used: MKS Sbase 1.3
LCD used: Reprap discount lcd - GLCD
Firmware: Custom patched smoothie that includes patched in clustering support that cohesion3d uses (also have a cohesion3d board on my co2 laser) - firmware github: https://gitlab.civade.com/pub/Smoothieware/-/tree/edge - you can find the precompiled .bin file under the FirmwareBin directory
Config file: started with a base smoothie config file. Changes made to support an i3 slaved dual axis z motor, diode laser and the glcd along with specific requirements to use the ext sd card slot on lcd
GLCD issues: The mks sbase has the exp1 and exp2 slot pins flipped so you need to trim off the orientation guide on one side of the cables going to your lcd and flip them upside down for it to work
Endstop issues: Smoothie does not support dual endstops currently so Iām just using the left hand side z endstop
Attached current smoothie config file
config.zip (4.9 KB)
