I have not long ago got my hands on an Atomstack A20 and was a little upset that the automatic air assist wouldn’t work without the purchase of the AIC1 controller. £90+ on Amazon!!
So I have made a small tutorial on how to upgrade the firmware on the LaserBox ESP32 V1.0 and the associated connections needed to enable the Lightburn Air Assist. I have copied the firmware from a board in the AIC1 which was not as easy as it bloody sounds (Thanks to misken who pointed me in the right direction for this). This needs to be flashed to the existing board.
To make things easier to manage I have uploaded the files to the LA Hobby Guy Forum AtomStack Air Assist
Please let me know on the post at LA Hobby Guy, if you need help, or can suggest any improvements to make this easier.
All I need to do now is save up the funds to buy LightBurn for GRBL and GALVO.
I had a look at the documentation you provided in “ahobbyguy.com” and have the question:
The motherboard of the Atomstack A20 Pro does not serve this port by itself in the current firmware ?
Wouldn’t it be the right approach to ask the manufacturer Atomstack to patch the firmware ?
I see you have attached a file for patching the firmware with a programme in the other forum, is this possible for all Atomstack diode laser cutters or only for certain models?
What does the new firmware do ? I’m wondering because I think it’s not exactly trivial to modify a firmware for a laser cutter ?
Maybe you can bring some light into the darkness.
If I understand you correctly, there is no pin on the Atomstack motherboard that responds to the “Air Assist on” signal from the Lightburn firmware ? Because if that were the case, you would only need to connect the additional board and you could operate the relay and control the air supply.
Greetings Per
P.S. I have an Atomstack A20 Pro but I don’t want to “flash it to bits”.
Correct, the controller doesn’t support air assist with the current versions.
You are right again, it would be better to ask Atomstack for them to enable air assit via firmware. But, they sell the AIC1 for money ££$$ so why would they give you a free update, rather than sell you something extra? Also, does any one really get any help from Atomstack via email?
The firmware will work for any Atomstack laser that uses the controller that looks the same as in the documentation, “LaserBox ESP32 V1.0”. I don’t have any other version of board to try it on. This is actually a direct copy of the firmware taken from an AIC1 unit, not some random guy hacking the firmware to bits. Although I am a random guy, I haven’t modified the firmware.
Again you are right, there is no dedicated connection on the controller that is for “Air Assist On”. The connection used in the download is the same one as used in the AIC1 unit. The only difference is getting power to the relay from the controller, rather than getting it from the power supply for the laser itself.
I hope this helps.
Please do give feedback if you do go ahead and upgrade the firmware.
There are pins on the board that you can control using firmware. I did another approach using FluidNC firmware, which means to remove the original firmware (which can be flashed back at any time) and replace it with a better one that also enables relay control. It’s about $10 for the full hardware required. Here is some documentation: Atomstack A/X/S20 Pro - Diode Laser Wiki
@SeanP1 if you agree, I might add your solution as well to that page. The wiki is intended to collect all available information
I didn’t know the ATOMSTACK AIC1, now I see that it is basically a complete controller, maybe with a different design but surely the old board can do the same if it had the right firmware.
If you buy the Atomstack AIC1 you have the old one for the trash.
The assumption that Atomstack just wants to make money is to be assumed.
Not OK but that’s the world.
I will have a look at your solution. I didn’t realise that it seems to be a standard board which could also be used with other firmware. Just the ability to connect directly to a wifi router would be something positive.
Yes the AIC1 is a complete unit. It’s a standard LaserBox ESP32 controller with different firmware, that you can’t get from Atomstack separately! It also comes with the relay and cable in a very neat unit. So it’ll look nicer than the one that I made.
The wifi option doesn’t let you connect to a router as far as I know (I could be wrong though). It lets you use the apps on your phone to control the machine.
normally the Atomstack is something like an access point and you can only access it with the app but it also has a web interface so you can connect the PC directly to the Atomstack. And if you have another access point that is connected to the router via network cable and to the Atomstack via Wifi, the Atomstack is also in the network and you can create the file on your computer and push it to the Atomstack via network to the SD card. For people who want to operate the Atomstack directly with SD card this is a relief. For me this is less interesting as I have an old laptop connected to the Atomstack.
I did not know that there is also other software. I think it would be interesting if you could see some information on the display when lasering, which is not possible now when I use Lightburn, but it would be a nice thing if you could see how long or which coordinates are currently being approached and so on.
I didn’t know that about the wifi. I never use it to be honest.
It would be nice to see on the small screen what is going on, on the machine, but I don’t see how that could work with LightBurn.
But, then again I don’t use the screen normally. Hell, to be honest I’ve only had this laser for a month, not even bought LightBurn yet (need the galvo version) as I was using the trial and had a hard drive failure. Will be buying LightBurn in a few days though as its camera function will be a great asset for the fibre laser.
