Is it normal that if I move the head of my laser when my X5 is turned off the laser fires? The steppers generating current when moved seems to be causing the laser to fire when the board is off. If the X5 is on and the stepper motors have been turned off I can manually move the head with no laser fire. Hitting reset on the X5 also causes the laser to pulse.
I couldn’t really say since I’m working from a Chinese made A5 BenBox system.
I really need to put my interlock switch on.
@Jonathan_Davis_Leo_L I was just sort of talking to myself there. That’d take care of the laser firing, but it doesn’t answer whether or not it should be firing.
Door switch ???
Definitely not !!!
@Ariel_Yahni_UniKpty @greg_greene I didn’t think so. I went a weekish between really using my machine due to work, and I can’t really remember if in the past I’ve always had the X5 booted and therefore haven’t noticed, or if it’s a new issue. My other thought was maybe it’s due to the power strip I wired up? It’s one of three issues I’ve encountered over the last couple weeks.
Ok, it’s not the power strip. I unplugged the X5 from the strip. The actual laser cutter is not wired into my power strip, it’s on a separate one. I still have the issue. The energizing motors light up the LCD as well as cause the laser to fire as it’s being moved.
Is the Laser Switch closed? What configuration are you using to drive the laser PWM.
From my analysis, all bets are off when using a level shift-er. I have no idea how the level shift-er electronics reacts in power transitions. As I recall to make it work required some strange grounding which suggest something is not working as expected.
BTW when using the 2 wire L approach you can leave the pot in.
I have noticed that moving the gantry when its not powered up does turn on some LED’s on the smoothie. This may be some form of “back emf” from the steppers. Have not tested with the laser enabled cause I have interlocks installed.
WARNING… WARNING!
You should not be in the cabinet without interlocks and the Laser Switch ON… as I have warned before when building new designs there are modes that can cause the laser to fire that either we have not found or relates to a failure. This may be one of them.
@donkjr I’m going to add locks today. At the least I then can know it won’t fire while I’m adjusting the head.
Thank you!
BTW I found that an easy way to wire interlocks it to bring them to a breakout board which is then connected to the LPS laser switch loop.
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The schematic and picture below shows how.
This board through J75 connects to the LPS laser switch loop.
J11 goes to a led/resistor on the front panel telling you if any interlocks are open.
Then you have simple two-wire assy’s that come from each interlock switch to the breakout which uses screw terminals.
You can ignore the middleman board I mounted it there for convenience.
@donkjr is there any reason not to do
Something like this? Ignore the hand drawn red wire. The drawn green wire is what I had been advised. It would be wired into the laser switch.
Any configure where the switches are all in series with each other and the laser switch works.
Its hard for me to tell from the picture but that looks overly complex.
You want it wired so that when the lid is closed the switch is shorted.