My adventures with Auggie.

[ArtF]

Tweakie:

>>I am really not quite sure why anyone would want to laser engrave a photographic image onto a piece of wood

  I got bit by photos in wood many years ago. In fact, Mach3 was born from a discussion
I had with Bob Landry one day in my basement dungeon in 1999. We saw a photo engraved
by router in wood of Marilyn Munroe on Ebay and I commented I thought we could build
a machine to do that. Bob kinda scoffed at first by warmed up to the idea as we perused
the parts we had laying around from old Xray machines we worked on..

  We built a small router table from a table saw frame, it had wire ropes on the axis driving encoders and was fed by dc servo motors, all going to a IO card from a  medical system plugged into my ISA bus. It ran for about 10 minutes and a few capacitors blew up like firecrackers with bits of paper raining down around us in a cloud of smoke.  All this of course led to EZCNC, Master5, Mach1,2 and finally Mach3.

    When I retired from Mach and got interested in Lasers, it became more apparent to me
why people struggled with lasers under M3. It was the power control, and I'm really
grateful to the guys at Pokeys, who really stepped forward when I asked if they'd be
willing to add just a bit of code to the 57CNC so I could do some experiments with
power over distance .  Auggie is only possible due to their assistance. No
other hardware can control the PWM on command that way except dedicated laser
controllers that typically cost much more.

    Laser control for photographic or 3d modeling requires both special hardware
consideration and very special software as well, so until Pokeys said yes, it just
wasn't possible to do what it does.
  Auggie is a bit rough as I'm sure you've found. It can do great work and is way
more powerful than it should be, but its unrefined and a bit buggy due to to a low
user base . That having been said, if used for a laser, its pretty good at it as that's
been its primary use here in that same dungeon from 18 years ago. As I find
trouble in my own use, I fix it up.

  I'm really happy your finding it useful, I too am pretty happy at its versatility
and the results it turns out. I cant promise it will ever be cleaned up to a high
level, it will likely stay a bit persnickety and cranky, but then its meant for
people like you and me who experiment and play and can get past the warts
and such.
  Im still working on a galvo cube to add to my laser, (waiting on a dual dac
board ), and I hope to upgrade Auggie to drive galvo's via Gcode, something
Ive always wanted to try.  Its technically a bit complex so its taking me forever
it seems. So if all goes well you can expect more laser functions in future
as I experiment with 3d printing and such if the damn galvos start working
as I hope they will.

  Thanks for the compliment , Auggie isn't used by very many , so its good
to hear its doing its thing somewhere. Its like an Author hearing someone
liked his book. I dont wanna write novels anymore, one was enough, but
its nice to hear someone likes one of my short stories. :)

Art


 

   




 

[tweakie]

Hi Art,

I am not asking you to do anything, just asking the question?

Would it be possible for Auggie to have axis scale values perhaps similar to the Mach3 Scale DRO?s ? (not necessarily full implementation of G50/G51).

Tweakie.

[ArtF]

Tweakie:

  Ill make a note to develop that in. My Galvo cube is starting to run now, Im in the final process
of turning it into a x/y step/direction device. My intention is to make Auggie drive it like any other
X/Y mechanism. SO scaling is something Id be interested in myself.
  Im not sure of the ramifications in photo lasing off top of head, but I will look into a scaling
proceedure when Im in there. Perhaps its time for G50/51.

Art

[tweakie]

Thanks Art.
Scale would certainly be useful at runtime when it comes to fitting an image within the stock. Interesting that the .aug files are identical if two different dimensioned .tap files are created from the same image. Perhaps it's just the Gcode that needs to be scaled ?

I think a Step/Direction Galvo is going to be a first and sounds to me like bit of a challenge.

Tweakie.

[ArtF]

>> think a Step/Direction Galvo is going to be a first and sounds to me like bit of a challenge .

Its been that for sure. But as of today I have it moving both mirrors under step/direction from
0 - 65536 steps for both x and y.  Next step is to connect it to Auggie, then I have to work with lenses
and all that so there's lots of challenges left. I have a Synrad V40 laser to use on it when its
all running. (If its ever all running..).

But so far, so good.

[Mooselake]

Tweakie, did you ever get that RF laser working?  Tried powering it off your jet engine :) ?

Kirk

[tweakie]

Hi Art,

I have never used an F-Theta lens so have no idea of the linearity of scale or the extent of the pincushion distortion but knowing how you eagerly dive into solving mathematical issues I am sure it will all turn out good.

Tweakie.

[tweakie]

Hi Kirk,

Yes indeed sir the RF laser is still working OK. It doesn?t get used very often but it offers a good comparison between RF and DC power control from Auggie.

I think the 208Vac, 3 phase from my jet engine would probably be a bit mighty for the 35Vdc of the RF.  ;D

Tweakie.

[ArtF]

>>I am sure it will all turn out good.

I wouldnt lay any money on it, but we'll see. :)

Art

[Mooselake]

I think the 208Vac, 3 phase from my jet engine would probably be a bit mighty for the 35Vdc of the RF.  ;D

This is only single phase but it might work :)

Kirk

[tweakie]

Hi Kirk,

Maybe.  ;D

Tweakie.

[tweakie]

We have had a couple of days of snow here in the UK which just about brought everything to a standstill. As a country we seem to be just so unprepared for anything like this. I could not get any collections or deliveries and work was put on hold giving me the opportunity of more playtime with Auggie.  ;D

Tweakie.

[ArtF]

Tweakie:

  I think your getting my snow. 
Here, we used to have a normal depth of a couple feet through
the winter, Ive yet to see more than an inch or so, and its gone in
a day.  I kinda like it.

Nice burn. Good grey scale. Im waiting for my theta lens, my galvos
are tuned up to speed, and Im looking forward to some test burns next
week to see just how a galvo with 50 watts on it can look..

Hopefully, I wont be disappointed, but if I am a firestar laser is a good
starting point for a conventional laser engraver.. :)

Art

[tweakie]

Hi Art,

I am sure you won?t be disappointed with your galvo performance but, with regard to greyscale, I will be very interested to learn just how speed affects the burn results (reaction time of the material to the laser action).

Tweakie.

[ArtF]

Tweaky:

  The math on that is pretty clear for photo engraving, the CNC57 controls the laser every 1ms,
so if I want 800x600 on a photo, Id need to take 800ms to cross the field at a minimum. I could do that fast on my conventional almost, but the saving in galvo should come from having
infinite acceleration and deceleration. (Or thats what Im hoping. :) )

  And then there is the material burn time, but I suspect with 50 watts Ill be able to move
as fast as a step/dir galvo can.. with the above limitation.

Art