Im looking at purchasing a k40 clone 40 watt laser from ebay, mainly just for the parts.
I have an MPCNC that i currently run with marlin, and lightburn connects just fine.
Does anybody know a way that i can run Marlin on the K40 using an mks gen L (which is what is running my mpcnc) and still control the output of the laser? I know the stepper motor connections and such, but i just am not sure about the K40 laser output. I assume it would be a pwm output similar to the current way that i am controlling my 2.5w laser, but unsure.
If that’s an 8 bit chip, unless all you plan to do is cutting I wouldn’t recommend it for a CO2 system. With a diode laser, your engraving speed is limited by the power of the diode. With a CO2 system you’re very quickly going to discover that 8 bit chips cannot process GCode instructions fast enough.
Marlin also doesn’t do power ramping, so any vector marking you do will have dark start / end points. I would stick to controllers that run GRBL 1.1f or later, or Smoothieware.