I’ve spent the past year turning on my air assist manually whenever a layer needed it, and then about a week ago I decided to spend 2 hours and automate the process(I use a creality 10w laser that doesn’t support air assist commands). I’m sure plenty of people have found similar or identical ways to do it but thought I’d post it in case someone finds it useful.
I’ve connected an inline relay to the air assist mains plug, that gets triggered by a switch mounted at the edge of the laser table. A small line copied in 2 layers with power at 0 moves the head against the switch and turns the assist on/off. I saved this as a ‘default template’ project and load it whenever I start a new project.
Now that is some creative thinking! Using a push-on/push-off switching method is a great idea. Bump it as needed. I am sure a lot of others could use this, like for a low/high air flow control too.
I know that roller lever switch is not latching, so can you share the details of what it toggles?
I think the adding in the layer to LightBurn to do the operation is pure Ruby Goldberg/Heath Robinson and I love it.
Thank you for sharing this. You’d be surprised how few people ever DO things to make their machines work better for them or maybe even more amazed to see how varied solution to the same problem can be.
It’s pure overkill, but I like using or re-using stuff I have at home, so the lever switch is connected to an Arduino nano that toggles a relay. Could be done easily with a latching lever switch(or even a simple push button if the spring is not too stiff). The good thing is that the 220v part is completely isolated sitting inside a small box in the enclosure, I got kids in the house, my 7 year old son loves the engraver and is always eager to help:)
Push Button ON-OFF Soft Latch Circuits, Battery Powered Touch Toggle ON OFF Switch, Momentary Button MOSFET Power Switch for Microcontrollers
Using a single tactile switch button to alternately toggle a circuit ON and OFF requires a circuit containing a bistable logic latch. Such a latch can be implemented using a D flop flop, or by using positive feedback around any two inverting amplifiers or logic gates.
Beware that if the switch applies power to a power supply with large input capacitors, and the load does not draw enough current for those capacitors to discharge quickly, then the transient button press may not turn OFF the switch reliably.
Nope, you need to use absolute coordinates as you’re sending the laser head to a specific part of the table to touch the switch.
If you want a more ‘universal’ solution, you should use the PWM output from your controller to the head and set a relay to close when your power is above a threshold(whatever your settings are when you cut and not engrave, I guess above 90?).
