Hi! My makerspace has embarked on a project to rebuild a circa-2004 Kern laser, primarily by ditching the old controller gear and installing a RDC6442-B instead. We’re choosing that goal because we already have two RabbitUSA QX-1290 systems which are already using Lightburn. I have the Ruida laid out on a bench with Geckodrives and some other stuff to help me prove this out in a testbed manner before we start hacking the Kern.
Today my challenge involve the several indicator pins on connector CN1. On the new controller, they don’t seem to work the same way as they do in our existing Rabbits. They are inverted.
Some input from RabbitUSA indicates that pins 5,4, and 3 can be used to drive 24v LED status indicators. These are (reportedly) current-sinking pins, so I set up some polarity agnostic 24v lamps on one of the green screw terminals:
- Green (“Power On”) across pins 6 and 1 (labels “24v” and “GND”)
- Red (“Laser Active”) across pins 6 and 3 (24v and OUT1)
- Blue (“Air assist on”) across pins 6 and 5 (24v and WIND)
- Yellow ('Status Active") across pins 6 and 4 (24v and Status)
On the older Rabbits, “Power On” and “Laser On” work as expected. If I move that terminal block over to my new Ruida, “Power On” works as it should, but ALL THREE of the others work … backwards. My “Laser Active” lamp is lit when the test rig is idle, and turns on when the steppers are moving. The Wind and Status lamps are off when idle, and come on while the steppers are moving.
So. Firmware differences? Or simply a Machine Config entry that I can tweak with LB? I looked, and saw nothing obvious. Then again, I’m just a noob here.