I am currently working on adapting my JTech laser to my XCP. In anyone else interested in that? BTW wouldn’t that be awesome given XCP’s size?
You had any luck with the adaptation? It would be awesome if there was a good way to do this.
I have designed the mount and I just need to find time to cut it and extend the cabling.
No reason this shouldn’t work.
D
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I had a few lazy minutes this morning to finish the mount. I made this from .5 Expanded PVC and mounted it to the head just using double sided servo tape. The small block at the top is used to quickly mount the laser so your don’t have to fish around for the holes (those if you who have used this Jtech laser know what I am talking about). It’s solid and should work. Just need to extend my cables.
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I completed the wiring but I will need to find out how to get spindle control. The XCP does not have
An external PWM port but it has to be there internally for the spindle.
The problem is definitely going to be a challenge for the PWM input to the laser. I am looking at the h100 inverter circuits to see if there is a way to pull what I need out. I will keep you posted.
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yes
Great progress David!
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Are you going inside? I’d love to see what they’ve got in there. I presume its nearly identical to the original Xcarve plus the VFD and better drivers.
I have been inside back when we were figuring out the GFI issue. Very small control board with the addition of the VFD as you mentioned. I looked for a PWM port but did not see it or it was unlabeled.
I would look at the cable going from the control board to the VFD. I would bet they used PWM to set the speed of the VFD (I had to replace the control board in mine as it stopped working right after I got it)
For the curious… this is the inside of your controller…
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Now as far as finding/using the current PWM port, this is what the VFD wiring looks like. Nothing clearly marked as the PWM. I will need to research the VFD to determine which wiring is the PWM! If I can sucessfully find it I will need to add a jack and a switch. The switch will be used to switch between the spindle and the laser.
Found the manual for the H100 and I am looking it over now. The AI1 terminal (yellow wire) is described in the manual as the “Analog Voltage Input”. The manual for the H100 does not mention PWM so I am still digging to see if this is the same.
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Thanks for the tips. It does appear that terminal AI1+ and GND- are the PWM input to the VFD. I found the following documentation on the H100 that confirms it. Next steps: 1) Using a Ohm meter I am going to verify voltage and speed control. 2) If this checks out I will add a switch and jack for the PWM output for the laser. The switch will allow me to switch between the laser PWM port and the internal VFD when using the spindle.
V70-1.5S1.pdf (2.7 MB)
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So the voltage look good so I won’t burn anything out when I plug in the laser. The switch is the AI1 lead to the spindle control which switches between the speed control and the external PWM port i added. That way the spindle and the laser both don’t run at the same time. I put a small filter on my PWM port since they have filters on everything else. We will see how this goes tomorrow when I plug the laser in!
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Okay, big step. The laser is active and I am able to adjust the laser strength. I have a new challenge that I came across while doing my first test burns. I am using LightBurn and I had the laser set to a speed of 30 @ 20% intensity. It begins cutting and then after about a second I get a message saying the software has lost connection to the USB device. Upon examining the console after re-establishing the connection it is reporting the GRBL has been locked out because of an alarm state… Any help would be appreciated!
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A new version of Lightburn solved this issue. I was able to run the laser from Easel with no issues so I decided to try the latest version of Lightburn. I have been testing this evening and everything appears to work as expected. Project complete!
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Not much, odds and ends less than$50.