Send commands from lightburn to Arduino to control Air Assist

[gresham]

Hey There,
I’ve tried to search for similar requests but i could not find anything.
I have an Ortur Laser Master 3 and I also have their Air Assist Module (Which works great for cutting BTW)
When i use the air assist during engraving I get allot of dust settling on the wood which causes the darkend burn marks, however if I only use air assist on the cutting layer, I get really really good results and the cuts are always cleaner.

So, is there any way to send an arduino trigger when doing cut layers so that I can capture this on my arduino and then turn on the air assist during that cut layer. I can handle the arduino side of the code but i just need some advice on how to get Lightburn to send “a command” using either USB or wifi over to my Arduino ?

Any suggestions or work arounds for this ?

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

Are you sure there isn’t some way of handling this already. From what I can pick up on the net, it seems to be common.

Since this is an Ortur laser, it’s always wise to post under that group. More people with knowledge of this machine will see it…

Maybe @Colin can move it for you… might even have an answer…

[Colin (Colin Worobetz)]

Unfortunately the official Ortur air assist pump here: https://ortur.net/en-ca/products/ortur-air-pump-1-0

doesn’t appear to be controlled by the laser’s own controller with a relay, which would enable it to be controlled by LightBurn. It’s on/off only, unfortunately.

I’d suggest putting a smart switch (or even a manual on/off switch, like a power bar) in line with the pump and turn it off and on as needed.

[gresham]

Yeah I am currently doing it very manually with just a simple on off switch on the air assist but ideally i dont want to be responsible for remembering to turn it on or off. Is there any way to trigger some sort of external code via an arduino where i could use this to trigger my relay ?