So I took a blind leap into the laser world,

Lasers
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So I took a blind leap into the laser world, hope you guys can help me get it working. I ordered the machine from ebay, should be here this week. I also order a smoothie board, middleman boards, and the digikey connectors.

I’m having some difficulty finding “plain English” directions for setting up the middleman boards. I’m somewhat knowledgeable about electronics, but get lost when things get technical. I have done a fair amount of controller swapping from cnc’s, so I understand the basics.

Am i better off not using the middleman set up? Any other parts I would need to get a k40 smoothified?

Thanks, you guys are awesome.

Mark

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Middleman use will depend on what you receive as there are at least 2 different setup on cabling. I had also ordered them just in case B it did not need to use them

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You might need level shifter depending on how you wire it up.

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had an amazon order, so i learned what a level shifter was and ordered one. Hope i didn’t need 3

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Well I ordered a level shifter, but I think it’s the wrong one. Can anyone confirm this?

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From what I could read it seemed right should be at least 1 channel 5V to 3.3V (Most are multichannel)

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Huh, shows up perfectly clear on my screen. 4-channel 5v to 3.3,v for some reason I thought it had to do 3.3 to 5v. Probably doesn’t work both ways

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Yup, is bidirectional you supply one side with 5V from the PSU, the other side gets the 3.3V from the smoothieboard. Then you put the smoothieboard signal line into the LV side and the opposing pin on the 5V side goes to the Laser PWM input on the powersupply. @Alex_Krause posted some pictures and a short write up of how his is connected.

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@funinthefalls I really appreciate all your help. I just went through +Alex Krause posts for the last hour and couldn’t find his write up! I was trying to get a message to him privately, but couldn’t get any contact info. I know there is a few write ups hanging around, and I know you get asked this like a million times a day, so I thank you for your help.

I’m just not quite finding all the info I need to get the smoothie http://going.My k40 didn’t come with coreldraw, so I am not even going to mess around buying it or trying to download their pirated version. I’m not a complete stranger to wiring up controllers, but the whole laser thing is a whole new world to me. I have all the parts, just missing some info! I would be happy to do write up when I get finished with lots of pictures to help out others as well!

Thank you.

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I’ll put together some links to the info on the weekend, have knee surgery in 7 hours. I have been planning on writing up a step by step illustrated guide to the conversion, should have that done by next weekend if you can wait that long. If you need to move quicker, just leave a public message in the k40 community (tag his name) asking for some help on the conversion, he will be happy to help.

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@Mark_Leino ​ here is the info for doing it via de level shifter https://plus.google.com/109807573626040317972/posts/CXFk1n4oezp

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Thanks Ariel, that was the post I wanted him to see.

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Thanks a lot guys

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There another option without the lever shifter here. https://plus.google.com/113684285877323403487/posts/99hJJ1Vw32P

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The story behind that one is https://plus.google.com/113684285877323403487/posts/a44Kq2Ccvto