upgrading hackspaces laser cutter

[Gary Richardson]

hi there,

i'm helping upgrade my hackspaces laser cutter,
it is an LY-6040, which is basically an enlarged K40 laser, 600 x 400 cutting area. flimsy mirror mounts and gantry, non adjustable mirror in the cutter head and so on, and it has a LAOS controler in it which constantly crashes,

we are going to be upgrading things one at a time, and hopefully eventually building a new laser of much larger proportions, and use the parts we bought for the upgrade to use with the new laser.... it's recently had a new HV psu, and the 60~ish watt tube is in good health (tube is 50mm diamiter and 1200mm long. so not sure exactly what wattage it really is)


First thing we are going to upgrade is the controller, the ruida controllers seem to be good for this, easy enough to use by loads of different people, customizable enough and easily enough for those a bit more technically minded.

It seems that the 6442S controller is the most common one used, but i see some people using the RDC6445G. they seem to be pretty similar in price,

What would be the best one to go for, please suggest a different version if needed.

ATM we will have x and y axis steppers, will be adding Z stepper later on to replace the DC motor lift table,

the x - y limit switches are infra red beam breaks, can the ruida controllers work with them? or should we change over to micro switches?

are there things that might catch us out with the ruida controllers, the LAOS controller turned out to be a massive lemon basically, ok it was better than the moshi board the laser came with, but it was so hard to set up, it was basically got semi working and left due to the laborious way you adjust paramiters on the board.

[sebastien laforet]

the x - y limit switches are infra red beam breaks, can the ruida controllers work with them? or should we change over to micro switches?

limit switches are basically on/off, so the detection technology is not important. just make sure to have to correct settings : some let pass the current when the switch is "on", while others do the contrary.

are there things that might catch us out with the ruida controllers, the LAOS controller turned out to be a massive lemon basically, ok it was better than the moshi board the laser came with, but it was so hard to set up, it was basically got semi working and left due to the laborious way you adjust paramiters on the board.

ruida boards have a LOT of settings. when buying a factory machine, you expect that the motherboard is preloaded with all the correct settings. this is also why the forum provide settings for the most common machines (in case you botch your configuration).

if you source all parts (motor, motor drivers, power supply, ...) you will probably try to start with a configuration from another vendor and then have to adjust settings to match your real machine (including things like pulse/mm, acceleration, backlash, ..)

[Gary Richardson]

What i was wondering about the infra red beam break type switches, they will need a source of power, i presume 5 volts, and they most likely reference to ground when triggered, but i will check,
does the ruida boards have that 5 volt output on the x - y limit switch port?

So it sounds like it's going to be fun setting the motors up with a new controller, i think we can get the config files off the current LAOS controller, maybe that will give us some hints on what to use? tho that one uses 0 - 100% for speed, where as any good controller uses mm/s.
The LAOS board also runs the gantry painfully slow, o hoping to get more speed out of things with the new controller too.


This is what the LY-6040 laser looks like, maybe someone recognises it and can give me some tips on a possible starting setting with a ruida controller?

ly-6040 laser.jpg

It's mechanism is basically a K40 laser, stamped metal Y gantry, head runs on roller wheels with a 5mm tall belt, X axis has a single linear bearing and rod slider, but other side has a single roller wheel, it's driven from both sides of the X axis, single stepper motor (nema 17 i think) on both axis.

ly-6040 gantry.jpg

[Gene Uselman]

I would seriously consider a different machine with a better rail and bearing setup. I am afraid you will have as much in the upgrades as it would cost for a good basic machine, and be a lot less time consuming.

[Gary Richardson]

We are planning to upgrade this machine in stages...

controller first as the LAOS controller crashes randomly making the laser almost unusable,

Then upgrade the mirror mounts and cutter head, along with adjustable tube mounts,

next will be an upgrade to the X-Y carriage, possibly using V slot rails as used successfully on a CNC machine we built in the space, with larger motors and proper sized timing belts and tensioners etc.

Swap the chain and DC motor driven Z axis for belt driven stepper motor controlled stuff,


After that we are thinking of making a much larger laser cutter, build the frame / enclosure, source a large honeycomb bed, make a gantry to suit based on the smaller one in the current laser, is that works that is.

Then we can swap over the good parts off the old machine (ruida controller, head n mirrors n mounts, HV psu (which is about 8 weeks old now, and was a good quality one) plus the 60 ~ ish watt tube.


Sure we would love to just buy a good bigger laser, say 1200 x 800 cutting size, but we'd have a budget of £3000 to do that, not sure we can get a decent machine for that cost, delivered to us in the UK.

If anyone can recommend one please tell us, as much as hackspaces love to make and modify things, some things we'd prefer to just buy and have it work... like our 3D printers, we have loads of different ones, all in different states of repair,

the space bought a prusa I3 MK3, and it ... just... works, reliably time after time with minimal standard maintenance.

[Gene Uselman]

I hear what you are saying- there is a lot to be learned by a huge upgrade... but, as you get older you look at things differently. I built a MK3 from a kit and learned a lot about it while building it, but I would not do it again [build, I mean- it is a great printer].

[Jeffrey Aley]

Here's a Ruida diagram that you might find useful.

Ruida diagram.jpg

You can see that connector 4 (CN4) has 5V available for your IR LED limit switch, and is looking for something that shorts to GND.

Best of luck with your project!

[Gary Richardson]

Cheers,

i am worried this is going to be a right pain to set up from scratch, maybe the closest laser to ours would be a K40, and if i can find the settings for one of those, and add on the extra length of the Z and Y axis??

Limit switches, is it normal to have them on both ends of the travel?
as our laser only has them at the home position, and it counts the steps to the end of travel... not good if it misses steps tho,

i'm wondering if it's wise to fit microswitches to either end of the X and Y axis? and do away with the beam break's (which have given us issues in the past when the little tangs of metal that break the beams get knocked out of alignment.

[sebastien laforet]

Limit switches, is it normal to have them on both ends of the travel?
as our laser only has them at the home position, and it counts the steps to the end of travel... not good if it misses steps tho,

i'm wondering if it's wise to fit microswitches to either end of the X and Y axis? and do away with the beam break's (which have given us issues in the past when the little tangs of metal that break the beams get knocked out of alignment.

you don't NEED sensors at both ends, just on one side of each axis to find the origin. provided your machine don't get mad and tries to go further than it's gantry size... if your controller is correctly set, the machine should stop before banging (at least with a ruida controller, not sure with some low-level controller like smoothie board or anything running directly g-code). the problem may occur if your control card loses steps and can not guess where the head really is, or if you move the head by hand and not reset to origin before running another job.

[Gary Richardson]

i think i've convinced myself that as many safety interlocks and limit switches as possible should be put on this thing then... it's used by upto 200 different people potentially, and each person has their own idea of how to use it that differs slightly from their induction on the machine.


I am wondering about the way the ruida controllers handle jobs, it seems it stores all past jobs in memory?

the current set up, we send the job to the machine, that is the only one there and you start it, when you're finished you either send it another or turn the machine off for the next user.
this deletes the job from memory, so starting it up starts afresh.

Can this be done with the ruida controllers?