Pocket Laser Engraver.
by:QUESTT
2020-06-21
Most of the hardware comes from my trash can.
Aluminum profile, medium fiber board and various nuts, bolts and wires.
But some things need to be bought.
Most of the electronic products can be found in Sparcfun, and the rest can be found in e-
Meet the bay or exchange. -Arduino -
This is the core of controlling electronics. -Easydrive -stepper driver. -Two DVD-rom drivers -
There may be more if you\'re not lucky, at least one DVD-
Rescue the laser. -Laser housing -
Single can be found on e-bay. -Laser driver -
There are a lot of alternatives here, I use a simple circuit based on LM317. -
Various construction materials such as nuts and bolts.
All you need from the DVD-
Stepper is a stepping motor assembly and a laser diode.
I was a little unlucky and found one of my DVDs-
Roms has a plastic assembly that is hard to use.
So I took three DVDs apart.
Rom, only two of them are used.
It\'s quite a forward channel and most DVD-
The rom I open more or less also works the same way.
After removing the screw at the bottom of the drive, you can lift it like a lid.
Below you will most likely find two boards that are of no use to us.
But keep in mind that save other useful parts that can be used for other projects.
For example, there is a small DC motor under the board in the front, which is worth saving.
This is the time to remove the front with the front of the tray;
After pulling out the tray, the front is loose (
Just use a hairpin and the small hole in the front).
The next step can include some screws and/or gentle forces.
Remove two circuit boards.
Please be careful with the ribbon cable of the stepping motor.
If you put the DVD-
Moving up from the right side and removing the lid, you should find that what we are looking for is the stepping motor assembly.
Remove the screw and carry it out.
Now that we have assembled it needs to be cleaned up.
It may be useful to remove the spindle motors, but I feel they are hard to drive and therefore do not keep them.
They are usually fixed in place by three very small screws, but sometimes they are part of a larger assembly, so be careful to remove it without compromising the two rods that hold the lens.
The lens is another story and the best way is to remove it and we need a smooth surface to connect the other parts.
Be careful not to hurt the DVDR laser diode.
If you don\'t want to buy a new powerful laser in the future, it can be used well.
See the next step.
There are a lot of great guidance on this topic, and I\'m going to make this part a quick part for the pictures to do most of the presentation.
It is not difficult to remove the laser from the DVDR, but most lens components look different.
Positioning diode (
There will be two, one IR and one red)
And remove it from the component.
Some optics and two magnets can be saved for future projects.
Once you remove the two diodes, you must be careful.
The two diodes are very small and fragile.
Remove the small attached PCB strip from the diode and check the red diode using two AAA batteries.
Now that you have the bare diode, it\'s time to install the diode in the enclosure.
Place the diode in the housing and use the back of the housing to press the diode very carefully using the sub.
You were at home when you were so far away.
Weld the wire to the positive and negative pins and screw it into the lens.
To make this as simple as possible, I got a medium fiber board a little bit bigger than the DVD --
Rom step component.
This will serve as the basis for keeping the x and y axes.
I found some spacers to fix the y-axis, but the bolts with a few nuts also work.
The measurement here is not important, but it is important that each axis is square with another whole axis.
I found it easier to align everything by installing the first component level on the mid-fiber board.
The workspace is mounted on the old laser diode assembly.
Make sure it\'s flat and then stick something on it as a workspace.
I found a 1/4 piece of acrylic resin to work well.
It makes this workspace stable enough, but since the laser can penetrate it, I\'m not sure if this is a safety hazard.
Later I found the solution that I thought worked best.
I cut a piece of the DVDR metal box into the same size as the acrylic resin and stick it on it.
That way, it\'s still very stable and you\'ll get a hard working space.
A positive side effect is that you can fix anything you carve with a small magnet.
For the x-axis, I found some aluminum profiles in my trash can, but as long as it is stable, almost anything can be used.
Measure the height you feel is right for the carving you want. I opted for 7.
5 \"long support pieces.
This will give me a little permission under 2.
It is important that the mounting holes on the assembly are not symmetrical.
Be sure to measure the distance from the bottom of the bracket to the linear guide rail.
In this way, you will definitely align everything.
The position of installing the x-axis will depend on the laser installation.
When the y-axis is in the middle position, the laser should be in the center of the work area.
When you install the shaft onto the base plate, drill a small guide hole for the screw after making sure everything is square.
Now, you should have done both the x and y axis and become square to each other.
The laser Holder doesn\'t have to be very complicated, my Holder is made of a small piece of plastic and a clip, and then everything is glued together.
Using the clip to hold the laser down allows me to change the focus by sliding the laser up and down.
As with all the other parts, the size is not as important as long as everything is square.
Here you just need to consider a measurement where the laser should be in the center of the work area when the y-axis and x-axis are in the center position.
I started welding steps.
I use the ribbon cable to connect the stepping motors and weld them to the existing connection of the DVD board.
At the other end I welded a four needle so it could be used with the breadboard.
The same is true for Easydriver, welding pin heads and use with breadboards.
A large number of ribbon cables can be found around old computer stores and service centers.
All of these old disk drive cables can be used well.
In the schematic I added a relay for the fan.
This may come in handy when carving produces some smoke.
Easydriver has two pins called MS1 and MS2, which set the sequence of steps.
Connect them to the five volt output of Easydriver.
This sets the step Order to microstep.
The four pins of the stepping motor are connected to the motor output.
I found that all the stepping motors have the same pins on the small connecting PCB.
Connect the pins to Easydriver in the same order as on the connecting PCB.
Control pin (step, dir, gnd)
Go to Arduino.
In addition to this, Easydriver also needs to connect the motor power supply.
I used a 12 V Wall HDD that drives the motor, fan and Arduino.
There is a potentiometer that controls the power of the motor, I just set it to a minimum setting, and I will turn it up a little bit if the stepping motor doesn\'t have enough force.
I don\'t know the ratings of the Pacers, and if they get hot you push them so hard.
The fan only needs to be connected to the fan output.
A small computer fan works fine, just connect the positive and negative leads to the correct output.
The laser driver is a circuit based on the LM317 and has no special requirements.
It will be good but it is far from the best.
I drive the laser diode too hard in about 300 mA, and if you do, you can\'t expect a long lifetime of the diode.
The best solution is to find a stronger laser and a better drive, but keep the spirit of the laser that I want to use the DVDR itself.
The laser on/off is controlled by the same relay as the fan.
If you want to simplify, you can skip the entire laser drive and use the ready-made drive.
So all you have to do is connect the power supply to the fan relay.
Of course, it may be a little more expensive.
The whole process evolved into a new Arduino shield, laser shield.
I have included schematic and board layout for Eagle format.
Creating a board is a bit out of scope for this Instructure, but there are a lot of really good guides on Instructure.
If you want to make your own layout with Easydrivers, I have made an Eagle library with the driver that can be downloaded here.
For Arduino, I started writing my own software.
But while looking for a good way to control movement from the serial port, I stumbled upon something called \"Grbl. This is a g-
There are a lot of code interpreters with beautiful features.
Since I have connected everything to the Arduino, I have to change my connection or software.
Fortunately, it\'s easy to change the control pins in the software.
However, I do have to download win and code from github. com .
It is not difficult to do this.
After downloading and extracting the code, you must change the port number in the configuration.
Make sure you get them in the right order.
Then all you have to do is start a command window, enter the correct folder, and type \"make \".
If all goes well, you should get one in the end.
HEX file for Arduino.
However, I have changed the pin-
From then on, in instructable, I use the default pin-out of Grbl.
This will make tracking and setting easier.
You can download the prepared hex file from the Grbl download page.
Important: current version of Grbl (0. 6b)
There is a bug in the queue system.
Laser on and off (M3, M5)
The command is not put into the queue and the laser is turned on and off once the Arduino receives the command.
This is solved in the edge branch.
You can download and download the source code from here, or get the compiled hex I\'m using from here.
This should fix this before the next version of Grbl.
Whichever way you choose, you will eventually get.
You have to go into the hex file for Arduino.
I \'ve tried several different ways, and my favorite way is through a program called XLoader.
Programming is very direct;
Select the correct serial port for Arduino.
Select the hex file and type of Arduino and press upload.
If you are using the new Arduino Uno, the XLoader does not work and an upload error will occur.
In this case, I recommend using ARP/Arduino uploader, but even this uploader has some issues with Uno.
When Programming Arduino, select com ports and micro-controllers in the corresponding drop-down list.
After that, you have to make changes in the \"parparams\" text. Erase the “-b19200” (
No quotation)
And click the upload button.
Anyway, you\'re done in a few seconds and ready to try.
Exit XLoader and enter the next paragraph.
Arduino needs to be set for this job.
Start your favorite serial terminal and open the port to which the Arduino is connected.
You should receive a welcome message: Grbl 0.
You get a list of options if you enter $ and then return.
Something like this: $0 = 400. 0 (steps/mm x)$1 = 400. 0 (steps/mm y)$2 = 400. 0 (steps/mm z)$3 = 30 (
Microsecond step Pulse)$4 = 480. 0 (
Default feed rate (mm/sec)$5 = 480. 0 (
Default lookup rate (mm/sec)$6 = 0. 100 (mm/arc segment)$7 = 0 (
Reverse mask of stepping port. binary = 0)$8 = 25 (
Acceleration in mm/sec ^ 2)$9 = 300 (
Maximum instantaneous turn speed change in incremental mm/min)
Set the \"$ x = value\" of the parameter or dump the \"$\" of the current setting, so you must change the steps/mm of the x and y axes to 53. 333 on both.
Just enter \"$0 = 53.
33 \", then\" $1 = 53 \".
333 \", return later.
Because the Z axis is not used, it can be ignored.
Acceleration can be increased to 100 (
Return \"$8 = 100).
When we move slowly with this machine, the acceleration may be very high.
Another side effect of low acceleration may be that when the controller keeps trying to accelerate and slow down but never reaches full speed, the curve burns more than a straight line.
If you build this like I did, one of your axes may be mirrored.
This is easy to solve.
OPtion $7 allows you to change the direction on the axis.
I want to change the direction on the x-axis, so I entered \"$7 = 8\" when I want to change bit 3 \"(
8 = 00001000 binary)
If you want to change the direction on the y-axis, you enter 16 (00010000)or 24 (00011000)to change both.
You can find the complete document of the reverse mask here.
Now you are ready for the computer setup.
You can type \"G91 G28 X0 Y0 [if you want to try some sports [return]
\"Zeroes the axis.
Behind is \"X10 Y10]enter]\".
You should see 10mm movement on each axis.
To complete this little sculptor, I made a small box with the Masonite board in the frame.
It just sticks together.
There is a small fan with an old graphics card in front.
Cooling is necessary when you install easydriver in any type of housing.
It gets hot when they are outdoors, and it gets hot in some kind of house.
I stuck some thread gaskets in the box;
This allows me to screw to the bottom.
Arduino is screwed to the bottom in turn.
It makes the carving knife a useful and easy-to-handle gadget.
Added some small additional features along the building.
The first is the fan that keeps the smoke away from the working space.
This is a small 40mm computer fan connected to the laser relay I wrote in the electronic steps.
The fan is pointed to a place far away from the working space and gently sucks away the smoke.
Another small but very useful additional function is the magnet used to fix the paper and other light-weight objects.
I bought it from an old toy.
After sticking some nuts on it, they are finished.
To change the focus, you can screw in and out the lens.
Alternatively, you can set the focus once on the work area and then slide the laser up and down on the stand.
That\'s what I did.
When the laser is in the lowest possible position in the bracket, I have a set focus.
Then all I have to do is measure the thickness of the material and increase the same amount of laser.
Most of the time I just put the material next to the laser holder and move the laser to the correct height.
So far I have done something with this little sculptor.
I will let the picture tell most of the story.
The only limit is your imagination (
Except for low power consumption and small working area). Key chain.
I found some paint mixer sticks in the local DIY store.
I like the look of wood and it\'s cheap.
I saw one piece and drilled a small hole.
After polishing, I carved the Binford logo on the sitcom Home Improvement. Plant marker.
Common popsicles engraved with plant names.
Personalized matching.
I just want to show off. )
Memorandum holder.
Carved clothes and small nd magnets glued to the back are a great way to stick a bunch of notes to the refrigerator or any other metal surface.
I like clothing and they are very versatile. Stamp.
Cut off from a small foam board and stick to a piece of muddy stone. Airplane.
Thanks for making G-scriptster
Code for the model.
Look at his model here.
Aluminum profile, medium fiber board and various nuts, bolts and wires.
But some things need to be bought.
Most of the electronic products can be found in Sparcfun, and the rest can be found in e-
Meet the bay or exchange. -Arduino -
This is the core of controlling electronics. -Easydrive -stepper driver. -Two DVD-rom drivers -
There may be more if you\'re not lucky, at least one DVD-
Rescue the laser. -Laser housing -
Single can be found on e-bay. -Laser driver -
There are a lot of alternatives here, I use a simple circuit based on LM317. -
Various construction materials such as nuts and bolts.
All you need from the DVD-
Stepper is a stepping motor assembly and a laser diode.
I was a little unlucky and found one of my DVDs-
Roms has a plastic assembly that is hard to use.
So I took three DVDs apart.
Rom, only two of them are used.
It\'s quite a forward channel and most DVD-
The rom I open more or less also works the same way.
After removing the screw at the bottom of the drive, you can lift it like a lid.
Below you will most likely find two boards that are of no use to us.
But keep in mind that save other useful parts that can be used for other projects.
For example, there is a small DC motor under the board in the front, which is worth saving.
This is the time to remove the front with the front of the tray;
After pulling out the tray, the front is loose (
Just use a hairpin and the small hole in the front).
The next step can include some screws and/or gentle forces.
Remove two circuit boards.
Please be careful with the ribbon cable of the stepping motor.
If you put the DVD-
Moving up from the right side and removing the lid, you should find that what we are looking for is the stepping motor assembly.
Remove the screw and carry it out.
Now that we have assembled it needs to be cleaned up.
It may be useful to remove the spindle motors, but I feel they are hard to drive and therefore do not keep them.
They are usually fixed in place by three very small screws, but sometimes they are part of a larger assembly, so be careful to remove it without compromising the two rods that hold the lens.
The lens is another story and the best way is to remove it and we need a smooth surface to connect the other parts.
Be careful not to hurt the DVDR laser diode.
If you don\'t want to buy a new powerful laser in the future, it can be used well.
See the next step.
There are a lot of great guidance on this topic, and I\'m going to make this part a quick part for the pictures to do most of the presentation.
It is not difficult to remove the laser from the DVDR, but most lens components look different.
Positioning diode (
There will be two, one IR and one red)
And remove it from the component.
Some optics and two magnets can be saved for future projects.
Once you remove the two diodes, you must be careful.
The two diodes are very small and fragile.
Remove the small attached PCB strip from the diode and check the red diode using two AAA batteries.
Now that you have the bare diode, it\'s time to install the diode in the enclosure.
Place the diode in the housing and use the back of the housing to press the diode very carefully using the sub.
You were at home when you were so far away.
Weld the wire to the positive and negative pins and screw it into the lens.
To make this as simple as possible, I got a medium fiber board a little bit bigger than the DVD --
Rom step component.
This will serve as the basis for keeping the x and y axes.
I found some spacers to fix the y-axis, but the bolts with a few nuts also work.
The measurement here is not important, but it is important that each axis is square with another whole axis.
I found it easier to align everything by installing the first component level on the mid-fiber board.
The workspace is mounted on the old laser diode assembly.
Make sure it\'s flat and then stick something on it as a workspace.
I found a 1/4 piece of acrylic resin to work well.
It makes this workspace stable enough, but since the laser can penetrate it, I\'m not sure if this is a safety hazard.
Later I found the solution that I thought worked best.
I cut a piece of the DVDR metal box into the same size as the acrylic resin and stick it on it.
That way, it\'s still very stable and you\'ll get a hard working space.
A positive side effect is that you can fix anything you carve with a small magnet.
For the x-axis, I found some aluminum profiles in my trash can, but as long as it is stable, almost anything can be used.
Measure the height you feel is right for the carving you want. I opted for 7.
5 \"long support pieces.
This will give me a little permission under 2.
It is important that the mounting holes on the assembly are not symmetrical.
Be sure to measure the distance from the bottom of the bracket to the linear guide rail.
In this way, you will definitely align everything.
The position of installing the x-axis will depend on the laser installation.
When the y-axis is in the middle position, the laser should be in the center of the work area.
When you install the shaft onto the base plate, drill a small guide hole for the screw after making sure everything is square.
Now, you should have done both the x and y axis and become square to each other.
The laser Holder doesn\'t have to be very complicated, my Holder is made of a small piece of plastic and a clip, and then everything is glued together.
Using the clip to hold the laser down allows me to change the focus by sliding the laser up and down.
As with all the other parts, the size is not as important as long as everything is square.
Here you just need to consider a measurement where the laser should be in the center of the work area when the y-axis and x-axis are in the center position.
I started welding steps.
I use the ribbon cable to connect the stepping motors and weld them to the existing connection of the DVD board.
At the other end I welded a four needle so it could be used with the breadboard.
The same is true for Easydriver, welding pin heads and use with breadboards.
A large number of ribbon cables can be found around old computer stores and service centers.
All of these old disk drive cables can be used well.
In the schematic I added a relay for the fan.
This may come in handy when carving produces some smoke.
Easydriver has two pins called MS1 and MS2, which set the sequence of steps.
Connect them to the five volt output of Easydriver.
This sets the step Order to microstep.
The four pins of the stepping motor are connected to the motor output.
I found that all the stepping motors have the same pins on the small connecting PCB.
Connect the pins to Easydriver in the same order as on the connecting PCB.
Control pin (step, dir, gnd)
Go to Arduino.
In addition to this, Easydriver also needs to connect the motor power supply.
I used a 12 V Wall HDD that drives the motor, fan and Arduino.
There is a potentiometer that controls the power of the motor, I just set it to a minimum setting, and I will turn it up a little bit if the stepping motor doesn\'t have enough force.
I don\'t know the ratings of the Pacers, and if they get hot you push them so hard.
The fan only needs to be connected to the fan output.
A small computer fan works fine, just connect the positive and negative leads to the correct output.
The laser driver is a circuit based on the LM317 and has no special requirements.
It will be good but it is far from the best.
I drive the laser diode too hard in about 300 mA, and if you do, you can\'t expect a long lifetime of the diode.
The best solution is to find a stronger laser and a better drive, but keep the spirit of the laser that I want to use the DVDR itself.
The laser on/off is controlled by the same relay as the fan.
If you want to simplify, you can skip the entire laser drive and use the ready-made drive.
So all you have to do is connect the power supply to the fan relay.
Of course, it may be a little more expensive.
The whole process evolved into a new Arduino shield, laser shield.
I have included schematic and board layout for Eagle format.
Creating a board is a bit out of scope for this Instructure, but there are a lot of really good guides on Instructure.
If you want to make your own layout with Easydrivers, I have made an Eagle library with the driver that can be downloaded here.
For Arduino, I started writing my own software.
But while looking for a good way to control movement from the serial port, I stumbled upon something called \"Grbl. This is a g-
There are a lot of code interpreters with beautiful features.
Since I have connected everything to the Arduino, I have to change my connection or software.
Fortunately, it\'s easy to change the control pins in the software.
However, I do have to download win and code from github. com .
It is not difficult to do this.
After downloading and extracting the code, you must change the port number in the configuration.
Make sure you get them in the right order.
Then all you have to do is start a command window, enter the correct folder, and type \"make \".
If all goes well, you should get one in the end.
HEX file for Arduino.
However, I have changed the pin-
From then on, in instructable, I use the default pin-out of Grbl.
This will make tracking and setting easier.
You can download the prepared hex file from the Grbl download page.
Important: current version of Grbl (0. 6b)
There is a bug in the queue system.
Laser on and off (M3, M5)
The command is not put into the queue and the laser is turned on and off once the Arduino receives the command.
This is solved in the edge branch.
You can download and download the source code from here, or get the compiled hex I\'m using from here.
This should fix this before the next version of Grbl.
Whichever way you choose, you will eventually get.
You have to go into the hex file for Arduino.
I \'ve tried several different ways, and my favorite way is through a program called XLoader.
Programming is very direct;
Select the correct serial port for Arduino.
Select the hex file and type of Arduino and press upload.
If you are using the new Arduino Uno, the XLoader does not work and an upload error will occur.
In this case, I recommend using ARP/Arduino uploader, but even this uploader has some issues with Uno.
When Programming Arduino, select com ports and micro-controllers in the corresponding drop-down list.
After that, you have to make changes in the \"parparams\" text. Erase the “-b19200” (
No quotation)
And click the upload button.
Anyway, you\'re done in a few seconds and ready to try.
Exit XLoader and enter the next paragraph.
Arduino needs to be set for this job.
Start your favorite serial terminal and open the port to which the Arduino is connected.
You should receive a welcome message: Grbl 0.
You get a list of options if you enter $ and then return.
Something like this: $0 = 400. 0 (steps/mm x)$1 = 400. 0 (steps/mm y)$2 = 400. 0 (steps/mm z)$3 = 30 (
Microsecond step Pulse)$4 = 480. 0 (
Default feed rate (mm/sec)$5 = 480. 0 (
Default lookup rate (mm/sec)$6 = 0. 100 (mm/arc segment)$7 = 0 (
Reverse mask of stepping port. binary = 0)$8 = 25 (
Acceleration in mm/sec ^ 2)$9 = 300 (
Maximum instantaneous turn speed change in incremental mm/min)
Set the \"$ x = value\" of the parameter or dump the \"$\" of the current setting, so you must change the steps/mm of the x and y axes to 53. 333 on both.
Just enter \"$0 = 53.
33 \", then\" $1 = 53 \".
333 \", return later.
Because the Z axis is not used, it can be ignored.
Acceleration can be increased to 100 (
Return \"$8 = 100).
When we move slowly with this machine, the acceleration may be very high.
Another side effect of low acceleration may be that when the controller keeps trying to accelerate and slow down but never reaches full speed, the curve burns more than a straight line.
If you build this like I did, one of your axes may be mirrored.
This is easy to solve.
OPtion $7 allows you to change the direction on the axis.
I want to change the direction on the x-axis, so I entered \"$7 = 8\" when I want to change bit 3 \"(
8 = 00001000 binary)
If you want to change the direction on the y-axis, you enter 16 (00010000)or 24 (00011000)to change both.
You can find the complete document of the reverse mask here.
Now you are ready for the computer setup.
You can type \"G91 G28 X0 Y0 [if you want to try some sports [return]
\"Zeroes the axis.
Behind is \"X10 Y10]enter]\".
You should see 10mm movement on each axis.
To complete this little sculptor, I made a small box with the Masonite board in the frame.
It just sticks together.
There is a small fan with an old graphics card in front.
Cooling is necessary when you install easydriver in any type of housing.
It gets hot when they are outdoors, and it gets hot in some kind of house.
I stuck some thread gaskets in the box;
This allows me to screw to the bottom.
Arduino is screwed to the bottom in turn.
It makes the carving knife a useful and easy-to-handle gadget.
Added some small additional features along the building.
The first is the fan that keeps the smoke away from the working space.
This is a small 40mm computer fan connected to the laser relay I wrote in the electronic steps.
The fan is pointed to a place far away from the working space and gently sucks away the smoke.
Another small but very useful additional function is the magnet used to fix the paper and other light-weight objects.
I bought it from an old toy.
After sticking some nuts on it, they are finished.
To change the focus, you can screw in and out the lens.
Alternatively, you can set the focus once on the work area and then slide the laser up and down on the stand.
That\'s what I did.
When the laser is in the lowest possible position in the bracket, I have a set focus.
Then all I have to do is measure the thickness of the material and increase the same amount of laser.
Most of the time I just put the material next to the laser holder and move the laser to the correct height.
So far I have done something with this little sculptor.
I will let the picture tell most of the story.
The only limit is your imagination (
Except for low power consumption and small working area). Key chain.
I found some paint mixer sticks in the local DIY store.
I like the look of wood and it\'s cheap.
I saw one piece and drilled a small hole.
After polishing, I carved the Binford logo on the sitcom Home Improvement. Plant marker.
Common popsicles engraved with plant names.
Personalized matching.
I just want to show off. )
Memorandum holder.
Carved clothes and small nd magnets glued to the back are a great way to stick a bunch of notes to the refrigerator or any other metal surface.
I like clothing and they are very versatile. Stamp.
Cut off from a small foam board and stick to a piece of muddy stone. Airplane.
Thanks for making G-scriptster
Code for the model.
Look at his model here.
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