Ramps Being Used For Laser Engraving

hi guys!

just wanted to know if anyone had been able to use the RAMPS for laser etching/engraving, would be pretty cool and very useful, i wanted to try and do it for a 3D printer I'm building with another head on it which was the laser, anyone have any ides?

thanks!

Ramps - sure.

Ramps / Marlin firmware , maybe not so much.

Slic3r / Ramps / Marlin, you will need a different tool chain to feed it.

There is an area on the forum for this sort of stuff....

Marlin with a few mods is quite capable of driving a laser cutter. You just need to figure out how to hook up the PWM on whatever is running the actual laser.

hooking up the PWM output shouldn't be too much of a problem, only thing would be the software side of it, i was thinking of basically when i wanted to print having a 1 layer thick image in th host software which is what i want laser engraved

The hackerspace I'm involved with (Connected Community HackerSpace - or CCHS) is using Marlin to control the hackerspace laser cutter.

Specifically, we use Marlin on a similar board to RAMPS (uses same motor pinouts) in an old Redsail laser cutter that the original electronics died on. We wanted something generically cross platform (ie: talks G-code) and open source. The board is an all-in-one design that talks to external stepper drivers, as they were already in the machine. While the board has similar pinouts for motors as RAMPS does, some connections will definitely be different, so check the Marlin config & the schematic of the board in detail if you want to use a RAMPS board with that firmware. You can find our copy of the Hardware and Firmware (a modified version of Marlin) up on github at: [github.com]

We use CamBam to produce the necessary G-code with an appropriate post-processor. You can find our post-processor on github at: [github.com]

FWIW: CamBam's spindle speed maps directly to the PWM for the laser, with a range of 0-255 (0 = 0%, 255 = 100%). We're currently producing useful docs on how to drive it based on training we do with people who want to use it. It's "close" but not there yet. If you've used CamBam before to drive a CNC mill, the only thing to remember is the spindle speed to laser PWM mapping, and to do cutting speed tests with your choice of materials.

thanks for the links and info, really useful! 2 questions, 1) is there a maximum number of extruders you can have when using merlin? 2) could you have 2 3D printer extruders AND a laser etching head in the same printer using merlin and RAMPS (because that would be ideal!)

thanks for the cambam post processor
I am going to be using one of the ramps accessory pins and m42 to turn on my laser. This would be my on M42 P4 S255 and this would be my off M42 P4 S0
I have tried changing this in your post processor but the gcode does not change. Where would I change this to generate gcode on cambam? I was using inkscape and the unicorn plugin for some gcode generation but it seems it has some issues. I would really like to use cambam with my ramps flashed with marlin

thanks
bryan