Okay. Thanks for that. I’d asked the owner of light burn awhile ago about which controller to replace my m2 nano with and he suggested the 6445x and said I’d need to replace my motors as well too. So that’s why I’m trying to figure out exactly what will work. I would like to use DM542 steppers x4.
I’ll look and see what steppers I already have in there. But I’m guessing they’re possibly not compatible with the 6445g or at least cheap junk. So wanted to get something more mainstream, compatible, reliable, and quality to improve output quality.
So how do I determine if I need to order 2 or 3 phase motors for the DM542 drivers? Or How do I determine what my current drivers and motors are for 2 or 3 and can perhaps continue using them?
I didn’t either the first time. Luckily I had the bits and pieces to make my wrong motor work, not everyone will be so lucky. Some motors have one flat, some have a second at ninety degrees from the first. A few of the cheap ones have no flat at all. If my gear / pulley has two set screws, guess how many flats I want?
If you are getting a new motor and gear, technicaly it only matters that they match, but I want to be able to swap things around in the future if I need to trouble shoot or need to get something operational on a Saturday evening. I can live without a Z motor to get my X operational while I wait on the new one to arrive.
Are you planning to upgrade a K40 to a Ruida controller?
If that is your plan, you will spend about the amount of the K40 for the upgrade, especially if you wish to include an upgraded motors. I’ve seen K40s for under $400. The controller is around $230 by itself. Add two motor drivers, two motors, it adds up pretty fast. Maybe prices are lower elsewhere.
My little machine has NEMA 17s in it, these measure 1.7" a side.
A larger motor would probably not fit in the mount without some modifications.
I had Corel for something else, but it wouldn’t interface with my new laser.
I played with Lighttburn for a while when I first got my laser, it came with a Top Wisdom POS controller. Lightburn was my only option for a decent design software. CorelDraw won’t interface with it. When I upgraded my controller, I had something Corel could work with, but I had interacted with a lot of uses here and just continued to do so. Your problem like many aren’t specific to Lightburn, and I can point somebody in the right direction.
Hi,
Thanks for taking a moment to reply jkwilborn.
My question is in the first post above. With pictures of our very large Chinese 80w laser thereafter that came with an m2 nano board. So not a K40.
But to reiterate the question:
“I don’t like the m2 nano board because it won’t work with lightburn. I’m told by the owner of lightburnsoftware.com that I will need to upgrade both the controller and the stepper motors. He recommends the Ruida 6445G controller. I’m trying to confirm if I can use DM542 stepper drivers and then if so, figure out if I can still use my current stepper motors, which he originally said I couldn’t, and if not, which driver motors will work so I know which motors to purchase.”
You may have a great point that I can get a K40 with everything for $400 though. So thank you for that. I’ll look at that now. That may be the best bargain actually now that you mention it. Smart actually.
Our current one has a very large bed on it though so I’ll be transferring all the parts if I go this route then leaving the k40 with the old parts perhaps. But that could be a good deal actually.
I’m not actually trying to fit a larger motor in the 80w laser. Just looking for nema17s that will match the Ruida 6445G, the DM542s and the current laser’s belts and gearing, etc. Sadly I’m not in possession of all the knowledge I need yet. But thankfully I’ve got a few leads thanks to all of you.
Just need to determine if I need a 2 or 3 phase motor and how much power it seems. I guess I need to figure out how much power my current motors have somehow?
Thanks for your and everyone’s input so far. It’s inching me closer to figuring this out.
So I found the panel on the right side of the machine that contains the power supply and PCB.
Doesn’t look like this has discrete stepper drivers at all. Looks like we got the bargain basement setup.
Not sure how to proceed now as it looks like this will need to have it’s electronics completely redesigned, right?
Edit: I just reread the original email from the owner of lightburn and I see I misunderstood I think. I think he only said I’d need to buy stepper drivers. Not necessarily replace my stepper motors. So that simplifies things perhaps. I wonder if I just need to buy the controller and the new drivers and wire them up to my current motors? Then somehow figure out the correct settings? Pulses/steps? Is that all there is to this?
Personally, I would try and work with the bigger machine. I have a 60W/80W hybrid. That’s an 80W tube in a 60W cabinet with the extension box, and I miss the larger bed every single time I use it.
I’d say yes. That’s what I was pointing out that it’s a ‘generic’ and they can cut corners to same lots of money. I think my motors are NEMA42 for my 50 watt China Blue.
Good luck… We are here to help, no question is too dumb, so ask away…
I think what you need to do is start at the steppers and see where the wiring goes. I’m not sure that anything in the pictures you have look like stepper drivers.
When I built my laser I used 3 phase for XY 3DM580 drivers and 573S09 3-phase and 573S15 3-phase steppers. Mine are NEMA24 so you would need something different.
Most 2 phase steppers will have 4 wires coming out and 3 phase steppers with have either 3 or 6 wires coming out,
You really need to sort out what’s in there before you start buying parts, you might not need them.
I think mine are the NEMA 24, after seeing @joel1 remark.
Don’t know how well I’d do without some way to adjust Z.
@joel1 this is from the M2 nano wiki. “The M2 Nano board is equipped with a pair of Allegro A4988 stepper motor driver chips.” How they use them I don’t know…
Thanks to you all and the guys over on the printnc discord group I’ve been able to piece together a much better understanding of all of this.
I’ve ordered 4 of the DM556 stepper drivers last night and will use those on the printnc build I’m doing. Then will use the four DM542 stepper drivers on my laser. I’m going to try and keep my current motors and see how they do. I will need to find a z stepper motor that will go fast enough to move the z table as it’s super slow right now and just using a regular motor with up/down physical buttons. So I’ll try and find some 2 phase motor via guessing and try it out by tying it into the 6445G. I’m excited to update the firmware so I can use the rotary on the U axis too. That’s gonna be great not having to continually swap my cable between bottles and flat materials any more.
Thanks for the pic @jkwilborn. I see I just have to determine the correct steps for the motors and amperage. I’m not sure how to do that yet but I’ll keep googling and then testing once I have everything installed. Thanks so much. I think the m2 nano board is not going to work as I was advised by the lightburn developer. It’s starting to make sense now that I’m understanding this all now.
My bed is 400x600mm. Is that a big sized bed? Seems medium sized to me. But I’ve not had a k40 which I assume is limiting. My z height is also VERY deep at around probably 400 as well. But I need to measure it.
Thanks for allowing the ‘dumb’ questions. I don’t know what I don’t know yet so they’re all dumb questions for the moment.
If you are going to use the Z axis to actually lower the z while you are cutting… My table ‘wobbles’ around quite a bit. My dial indicator tells me the screws are bent.
Oh, do people actually do that? I thought I’d just raise or lower before starting the job. I just wanted to get a faster motor to speed up how long it takes currently and integrate it into the controller panel.
for my Z axis I used 2 23HS30-2804S steppers and 2 DM542S drivers. I only use my Z axis to lower the table when cutting or engraving things that are too thick to fit under the nozzle otherwise. I also lower it to change to different focal length nozzles.
It it fully software controllable, when Lightburn runs a focus test, it will drive the table up and down and the Z axis does auto home during power up on my setup.
One of these boards and I thought it was the M2 nano is quite a clever design. Most of the control boards for these types of machines have built in drivers on board.
Even at 1 amp, if that’s holding, it would be 24 watts for it to dissipate. Mine grbl had a set of heat sinks on the same kind of driver chips.
Joel, thanks for the photos. My table has a few mm of ‘wobble’ in all directions. If it was stable I’d follow your installation, but don’t know if it’s really a salvageable situation. Or worth the cost and time for the little I’d use it for machine control.
On my LED machine (CNC3018) has Z control. I’d like to have a motor, but I don’t think I can expect any kind of consistency using it for anything critical.
I have thought about putting one in and driving it with and Arduino so I don’t have to ‘crank’ it up and down.
“It it fully software controllable, when Lightburn runs a focus test, it will drive the table up and down and the Z axis does auto home during power up on my setup.” WOW! That’s cool! I had no idea this was possible. Thank you for mentioning it! I’m pretty excited now about the possibilities of the upgrade. I’m sure there’s more like that with lightburn and a good controller. Very cool.
