I think I have just the right youtuber to make you think again about not converting your nice machine:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0hguDEHeIJtMbYSpsPsbnc2gNPdG0nvh

Have a lot of fun with your new toy!

Michael

They do it in Fusion 360, but only for turning the laser off 8-( :
But this is easy to fix with a custom Postprocessor.

G0 S255 M4

G0 S50 M4

G1 S0

also in Fusion change is quite low as you can only define one power setting per action.

Other tools like laserweb use the S parameter in a much more aggressive way for laser raster (grbl):

G1 X0.10 Y0.10 S0.0000
X0.20 S57.4706
X0.40 S57.8562
X0.60 S58.2353

for smoothieware it uses a value between 0 und 1.0 for S :

G1 X0.10 Y0.10 S0.0000
X0.20 S0.5765
X0.40 S0.5739

This is the code created by "Grbl Laser" Postprocessor:

%
(1001)
G90 G94
G17
G21

(2D-Profil1)
G54
G0 S255 M4
G0 X24.9 Y0.3
G1 Y24.9 F1000
G1 X0.1
G1 Y0.1
G1 X24.9
G1 Y0.3

(2D-Profil2)
G0 S50 M4
G0 X62.5 Y12.5
G3 X37.5 Z0 I-12.5 F1000
G3 X62.5 I12.5
G1 S0
M30
%

from Duet Doku I see that

G94 Set units per minute feed rate mode is missing but I guess that is ok as mm/min is default for Duet
G17 Select the XY plane (for arcs) (maybe also does not matter)

Spindle on is done with G0 S255 M4
Spindle off is done by G1 S0, not sure if a M5 is needed here or not

M30 is the only strange candidate,

for grbl it is

M30 Program Pause and End

on Duet it is

M30: Delete a file on the SD card

but propably also ok because no file parameter is given.

I will try that code early next week, my Laser is not where I am right now...

Did somebody already create a Laser capable Postprocessor for Fusion360?

Hacking the GRBL postprocessor to be Duet compatible is pretty straightforward, but I do not want to duplicate work that was already done, I found one discussion via search that was about the CNC Postprocessor but It does not look like something already got implemented (and CNC and Laser mode are two (slightly) different things anyway.

I did find out today that the new laser mode is available in the 2.02 beta.

Now I am asking myself how to best use it with a CO2 power supply.

Those supplies have two inputs, one PWM or analog imput that defines laser power (called IN) and two Pins (TL and TH, one active low, one active high) to turn the laser on/off.

http://www.jnhyec.com/en/newsxx2.asp?signid=&infoid=133

What I do at the moment (I am still using smoothieware for my laser, but I am not too happy with it's performance) is that I put the IN pin to +5V (enabling full power) and then use the pwm signal from smoothie on the TH pin to contol output power.

This works well but the power supply is making quite some high pitch noises because (I guess) the Laser is switched on/off at the very high pwm frequency.

Perhaps a better way to operate the power supply would be to have the PWM signal on all the time and to turn on/off the laser with a second pin.

The function of the pin would be to switch state on every begin/end of a G1/G2/G3 , the PWM signal would go to IN and the switch pin would go to TL or TH, which ever is better for making sure that the laser does not fire on boot.

Is this something that is doable/makes sense? Did anybody already try this?

Michael

I have good WiFi connectivity, RSSI -43dBm, Broadcom chipset based router. Have upgraded to latest firmware and beta9 server, could do two small prints of 30 minutes without issue, this morning I could not reconnect. Unfortunately i accidentally turned off the pc i used for usb logging, will retry tonight.

I yesterday isolated the Duet from interference by first putting two alumnium plates on top of the printer and then placing the Duet above this metal shield, see attached picture.
Later, during a print last night I lost connectivity and could not reconnect. I tried another trick by rebooting my router to check if the Duet reconnects after the WiFi signal is back, it did not. All my other devices reconnected as usual and duet also reconnects when it is not in this 'broken' state.

David, can you please check my comments a little higher than this last comment, I‘d like your idea if what I saw is something worth following up or just a crash. At least the sympthons look exactly the same as a random crash, at keast from what I see in the logs of the router

I also have random disconnects, sometimes a few seconds after startup, sometimes shortly after starting a print. The only pattern I see is the pattern on what I see with station Info provided by my router. Besides that everything feels random, crashes after a few seconds, no problems to connect after several hours of idle after a print, I have it all

Not sure if this is helpful or something totally different:

I can now create the Ajax Errors whenever I want. Turns out that it is good enough to remove G32 and G28 from my GCode file (I reconnected the steppers), then I only need to change temperature when the printer is heating up for the 2nd layer and I get the disconnect (most likely because Duet crashes, the whole gcode behaves a little strange without the homing command)

Do you have a watchdog process running that restarts duet? In that case I am perhaps onto something, if not then what I am seeing is simply a crash that kills duet plus wifi, no more, no less.
Just in case I have uploaded the gcode here:

http://temp.michael-ring.org/D_Delta2LowerPulleys.gcode

Michael