I have an Ortur LM2 and now about to receive a Monport 40W and am using Lightburn. I am wanting to DIY a solution that either gets a signal from Lightburn when a job starts to that I can use to trigger a smart plug to start the exhaust fan. Further, I’d like to be able to trigger on any LB layers that have air assist enabled so that I can turn on the air compressor I’m using via another smart plug.
I can handle the coding and integration if I can somehow get LB to send some sort of message? MQTT support would be ideal but even a real time log would also be fine.
The Monport controller should have a pin already dedicated to air assist, enabled by the Air Assist toggle on each layer in LightBurn. You could just wire your switch to that pin on the control board.
The Ruida has two signals … status goes active (low) when the machine is in ‘run’ mode. The other is ‘Wind’ and that goes low when a layer with ‘air assist’ enabled starts to execute.
This appears to be somewhat common in dsp type controllers.
Mine and many others use the ‘status’ signal to enable air pressure via one solenoid which flows through a restrictor to reduce pressure. The ‘Wind’ signal enables a 2nd solenoid that bypasses the restrictor. If you use solenoinds with coils, don’t forget some kind of back emf diode… I use small signal diodes for this…
Thanks for this. I have not received the unit yet so hopefully I can find a pinout. That would definitely work for the air assist and I guess I can just do the exhaust manually as I guess there is nothing to signal that a job has started?
With GCode, no. If the machine has additional pins or commands available, you could use a GCode start / end command that you add yourself, but I’d honestly be surprised if the controller had generic outputs available.
I’ve talked to Monport and they say there board is not compatible with air assist. There is PWM 5v and a 12v pin on the board. Can I use one of those to control my air assist?
