laser Engraving Forum

[Bope]

I know some people on this forum do laser engraving and was hoping I could get some help. I have a Sain Smart laser engraver that attaches to an Ender-3 3D printer. I have not had good luck with it but wanted to give it another try. It worked long enough for me to get it set up but when I went to do the actual engraving I had no laser. I am looking for an active forum on laser engraving to help me do some trouble shooting. I was hoping someone here might know of a good forum. I have found a couple forums but when you open them up and the front page has posts covering the past year and only a couple of them have one or two responses I don't think they are very active.

Just in case someone here can help with the actual problem, here is more information. The engraver plugs into a 24V fan port on the printer. This port controls the fan by PWM. On the cable to the laser there is a small board. On my laser it looks like a custom MP1584EN buck converter. When examining this board it appears one of the IC chips may have let out a little magic smoke. I only get 0.22V out of the board. If I look at a current picture of the laser for sale on the Sain Smart website it has a very obvious LM2596 buck converter, I can find the exact same one on Amazon. I have ordered the same buck converter as on the newer ones and it will be ease to install when it arrives. What baffles me is you cannot control the laser power by PWM with the buck converter inline. I also find conflicting information if this is a 24V/12V laser of just a 12V laser. Unfortunately there is no electrical information on the laser so I can only go by sketchy documentation in website postings. If it can work on 24V why can't I just remove the buck converter?

 

[hooked]

There is an active private Facebook group run by Sainsmart for CNC and laser engraving. Perhaps that is a good place to get detailed advice and support from them directly. They are called a CNC community, but there is discussion on the 3D printer laser modules.

SainSmart Genmitsu CNC Users Group | Facebook

⚙️This community is all about SainSmart Genmitsu CNC routers, if you’re involved in Genmitsu CNC or Laser Engraving, then this is the group for you. If you are looking for SainSmart customer...

www.facebook.com

 

[SteveJ]

You can try lahobbyguy.com I don't see much about your particular laser but the forum has a wealth of information about diode, co2 and fiber lasers as well as great info and videos on using LightBurn.

 

[Bope]

Thanks for the responses. It seems only me and the few people that post reviews on Amazon are the only ones that bought this laser. I found 4 active sites and Sawmill Creek was the only one to give a response. It was inappropriate to the question like usual from them but at least a response. I got my new buck converters and installed one. It does a good job of maintaining the 12V even with different settings on the PMW feeding it. There is a point in which it can't maintain the 12V but that is expected. So like I though the only control over the laser is full on and full off. I also finally found some software that will output the correct flavor of gcode and it seems to be working.