I have a Light Objects table arriving in the mail in a few days and I was wondering what I can use to control it besides the large stepper drivers and driver board? I saw that Dons Things blog post said he did some coding for an adafruit controller he used and had to upgrade due to needing more power. I have DRV8825 boards around and such so I SHOULD be good there but what “code” do you have to use on an arduino to get the UP/DOWN control?
TIA for the help!
Are you using the stock laser control board or something else?
Sorry, I have the Awesome.Tech Mini Gerbil
Here a bit of a discusion on this topic from the G+ import
Not sure if @funinthefalls ever posted his version.
I ended up using a rotary encoder that is normally used on a CNC router pendant to control the driver. Never did document it and I no longer have that machine (I should learn to document things better…lol)
I haven’t used it much yet, but I had already swapped out the stock controller for a Smoothieboard which has enough stepper drivers to drive the table and I’m using LaserWeb as my gcode sender and I added a Z homing switch which homes with the bed at the lowest point (that way if there is something on the bed it won’t crash the head into it). Seems to work just fine. The one issue I have with the Light Objects table is that the 4 threaded rods don’t seem to be very straight and the bed wiggles a bit when raising or lowering. Not a big deal if you never plan to move Z in the middle of a job, but with my software setup I should be able to vary Z between operations which could be used when doing multiple passes on thick material or to vary focus for other effects. Light Objects sent me two replacement threaded rods, but they don’t roll on a table evenly so I’m not optimistic that they’re better than the original ones.