Drive Galvo with Duet & RRF

JayT

Based on the reference above, Can you help me with following questions?

if one can use Duet 3 (SPI) to connect to a laser Galvo by modifying RRF? Can someone give more insights on how we can interface Duet with Galvo using DAC?
Can we interface a Galvo controller library to Duet RRF directly ?
I plan to work on an SLS project , and wanted to know if Duet can be used here, with some modifications in RRF? @dc42 : can you confirm if its feasible? what things to consider before starting on such modification?

JayT

Can you help me here to understand feasibility to drive a galvo for a project ? if you answer questions above, it will guide me on how to proceed on the project.

dc42

Can you provide some information about how the galvo needs to be driven? In particular, does it need a digital or an analog control signal to set the position?

JayT

Hi David,

I am still researching on the galvos from market. What I know is mostly its a CO2 laser type. To select a galvo, I needed to know methods of communication possible via Duet RRF with laser devices/galvo.

Some Galvos have their own controller library. Is its possible to call these libraries to send travel information instead of calculating step pulse ? Meanwhile I will try to gather answer to your question.

CAn you share some details on the DAC discussion in Drive Laser Galvo ?

(Generally, Galvo controllers convert linear distance movement, to angular travel of mirrors for 2 axes to travel laser as required to draw).

dc42

If the galvo requires an analog input, once option would be to use a SAMMYC21 to receive CAN movement commands, and have the step ISR just update a motor position variable instead of generating steps. Then a separate RTOS task could read the step counts and generate commands to send to a 16-bit SPI DAC to drive the galvo input.