Make Nashville K40

Make Nashville has a wiki page for their K40. I like that they list all the mods that they have done and how clear all of it is. Just thought it would be helpful to share and see what people think about their build.

Make Nashville K40 wiki page

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Some good mods there. If you want to upgrade to a better controller the Mini Gerbil from Awesome tech or the LaserBoard from Cohesion 3D are straight drop in replacements. While things like a smoothieboard are a bit more work. The developers of the Mini Gerbil and LaserBoard are both members of this form.

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Have you decided what control software you will be using?

For now I will use K40 Whisperer with the stock controller. I will upgrade the controller sometime soon.

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What are the advantages of switching from the Nano M2 to one of the mini gerbil or the LaserBoard?

Advantages:

  • Interpreting gcode lets you use a wide variety of tools; it’s the common language
  • In particular, LightBurn is highly functional and doesn’t work with the m2nano

Disadvantages:

  • K40 Whisperer and MeerK40t are well tuned for many common laser tasks and both work (at least at this time) only with the m2nano
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I’m quite happy with K40 Whisperer and MeerK40t. So would it be fair to say that, for me, there is no big advantage of switching away from the M2 Nano board?

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That seems fair to me!

@Tatarize posted a great video on how the m2nano works that is worth watching.

If you changed to a gcode board, you’d end up with a different software stack. LaserWeb, Visicut, Kiri:moto, Lightburn, etc. The K40 Intro has an incomplete list that shows the choice you make with the three main options for laser controller.

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