Smoothieware info for someone without a clue?

[Gene Uselman]

I bought and received a Wazer desktop waterjet cutter and the machine looks very well built [this was a Kickstarter project]. It has online software which is very sad however. I have been in contact with their support staff and they say 'we are hardware guys, not software'. I suggested developing a post processor for Aspire or Fusion 360 but I have not idea if anything is happening. I did find this on line but cannot follow it anywhere:

The Wazer waterjet is controlled by a custom controller designed to run a custom flavor of the open-source Smoothieware firmware. The controller has the drivers built-in to run stepper motors, as well as all the digital inputs and outputs to run the machine.

It comes with a cut file to cut a sample WAZER emblem from .125 aluminum, so I have some g-code for a sample, is it possible to reverse engineer the g-code by any chance. I have suffered with RDworks for years and am slowly getting ready to switch to Lightblade, the latest problem is the Material Library only accepts metric and I already have a RDw library in decimal imperial measurements.

It's always somethin'- , I am too old to be learning to skirt around more bad software...

[Pete Cyr]

Pretty neat - I can think of lots of stuff I would have preferred to cut using one of those vice a torch or saw

[Doug Fisher]

Very cool. Let us know how it works for you. No doubt there are many here who considered buying one of those way back when they were first announced.

You ought to contact Oz at Lightburn to see if Lightburn could work. From the Lightburn website:
"We currently support most Ruida, Trocen, and GCode based controllers. Supported GCode controllers,include Grbl, Smoothieware, Grbl-LPC, and Marlin."

[Bill Northup]

A couple of things - I assume that you meant Lightburn - not Lightblade. I use Lightburn a lot and the input's for the material libraries match the units you choose in setup. I can change to inches/sec and all the speeds in my libraries match. I actually go back and forth all the time.

For smoothie I use a smoothie controller (C3D) on my ACRO/diode laser system and on my K40 machine. The interface from Lightburn is the same as my other controllers, set speed and %power. By looking at the sample G-code you should be able to see what speed and power they are using. For smoothie it self I have found very little useful documentation, most of what I have learned is from reading all the details in the config file. Everything seems to be set up at boot time using the included config file - or last used config if no SD Card/memory is available.

[Gene Uselman]

Yes, lightburn...that's it. That is an interesting thought, I am at an inlaw's river place for a couple days, I will give this some noodlin'. Thanks.

[Larry Gonshak]

If the unit runs on G-Code, you have a lot of options but the biggest question is what will connect to the Wazer control board.

I would talk to Ray at https://cohesion3d.com/ He can also be found on https://forum.makerforums.info/ and https://forum.lightburnsoftware.com/

He has designed and programmed smoothie boards for lasers and 3D printers. I am sure he might be able to help you out.

If you want to talk to the man who designed the smoothie board, Arthur Wolf, you can head over to https://forum.makerforums.info/ and ask for his help.

[Gene Uselman]

Thank you Larry- I signed up to MF and will spend some time perusing it when I have a faster internet connection- looks like my kinda fun, Gene

[Larry Gonshak]

Glad I was able to help. Please keep us posted on your journey!

[Lightburn Admin]

the Material Library only accepts metric and I already have a RDw library in decimal imperial measurements.

The 0.9.04 release of LightBurn now supports Inch and Metric measures - it uses whatever your system units are set to.

[Gene Uselman]

Thank you Sir. I cannot begin to tell you how wonderful it is to have a voice in programs which you use every day, and how uncommon it is. Gene