Max Freq is capped at 200KHz???
I think that should be 5000KHz! Set it to that.
The timing constants seem weird. Jump delay of 320-350us and laser on TC of -300us sounds bananas.
I can’t give you a value, they need to be calibrated. I only know mine. Let’s try the calibration routine I came up with this week.
OK, well, first we find the focus. Put a piece of aluminum or steel in the middle of the work table. If that’s a 110x110 working area, that’s an F163 lens. The “middle” of the lens (which you can only guess at, since you can only see the bottom surface) is 163mm from the work.
There should be up/down buttons to move the Z. I don’t know how your rangefinger works and we should just start from manual. Poke at buttons and see what they do.
Lift the Z a bit low so we know which way we should go. Like, I dunno, 5mm low. Or 10mm.
Set JUMP SPEED=500.
MIN/MAX JUMP DELAY=0
JDL=10
Laser On TC=50
Lasr Off TC=225
End TC=100
Polygon TC=100
Make a small rectangle in LB, middle of the workspace, set to FILL
Set SPEED=900
POWER=100%
Freq 30
Q-pulse 200ns
Line Interval 0.03
Leave everything below that off. Click Timing, make sure it is not overriding.
This will scan quite slowly. 200ns should be enough to mark the metal with a single pulse when in focus. I only need 30ns but I have the 300W.
Put on safety glasses, hit “play”. That doesn’t actually make it start yet. You get a popup window and a red rectangle should appear on the work. If you hear a whine from the head, stop. Make sure the rectangle lands on the work.
Click “continuous”, I guess. Be ready to press “STOP”.
Start it. The laser control window on the right should show a green progress bar and it will keep firing even if you click away from the popup “play” controls.
When not in focus nothing will happen. Hold down whatever button raises the Z. Soon you will get into focus and you’ll see a bluish-green-white line engraving across the work. Go a little further and it disappears. You may feel heat on your face like you’re facing a campfire while it’s out of focus. But it’s spread out and you’re wearing safety glasses, plus this is really low power.
Go here and get the TON/TOFF timing test here, the one with the red/blue tower:
How to calibrate TCON/TCOFF for galvos (BJJCZ) - #9 by Dannym
Go back and lower the q-pulse to the smallest number that still makes a white line while focused on metal. (QMinMark). Do not touch speed or freq, QMinMark is taken when pulses don’t overlap. You need the manual to know for sure, but if it’s like other M7, valid Q-pulses are 2,4,6,9,13,20,30,45,60,80,100,150,200,250,350, and 500. 1=continuous wave and freq is unusued.
Config green layer as
SPEED=900
POWER 100%
FREQ=30 (KHz)
Q-Pulse=QMinMark
Config red and blue layers with SPEED=5000
POWER 100%
FREQ = 166.67 (KHz)
Q-pulse: QMinMark
Line Interval=0.030mm
The red will have scan angle=0, blue is scan angle=180. Leave that.
Run the test and follow the iteration instructions for setting TON and TOFF and hopefully you’ll converge on the zero line.
Pull up the LogBoolean test. Use the XOR test on top right, move it to the center of the bed and make sure there’s stock there and in focus.
Use the same settings you used on the red layer.
“bidir” off
Test. Check under microscope. The diagonal corners of the checkboard should meet at a point, not isolated and not overlapping. This should be able to do that all the way to the lower left hand corner. If it only gets 3/4 of the way there, you could try to recal TON/TOFF but you’re probably eager to see it “do something”. I won’t blame you if you wanna move towards getting something to work.
If ok, try again with “bidir” on. Hopefully similar results.
Try with 45 deg rotation, 4x passes. Check under microscope.
Let’s say a miracle occurs and it looks solid all the way down… or you don’t care about fine detail and just want to see it go. Both good.
Go get a depth map, scale to whatever size you want. US nickel is a fine coin blank in a pinch. Set to 64 passes, scan angle 0, 45 deg rotation, click “enable auto rotation”. raise your q-pulse by like 2 or 3 steps. (if it was QMinMark was 80, use 150 or 200). Everything else the same. Fire. Boom, you should have something.
64 is shallow. It can go deeper with more passes, sometimes we do 256. I do think the LI needs to stay at 0.030 for an F163. 166.67KHz at 5000mm/s means it fires a pulse at 0.030 intervals. So all the pulses are side-by-side but not overlapping. Don’t change those. If it’s pecking too hard with each mark, lower the Q-pulse rather than Power.
The speed might be able to go to higher but that might be complicated to calibrate for, and you must increase FREQ by the same amount so it still fires at 0.030mm spacing