I’ve just installed LaserTree K60 on my AltMill, followed all videos and instructions. The laser works.
I have a few problems:
Spindle/Laser selection dropdown shows only default spindle. If I click on it it shows “No Options”. Default spindle is set to H-100 (2.2. kw from SL), spindle 1 to SLB_LASER. I can set default to SLB_LASER and it will work, but switching with hard reset every time is, obviously, a no-go. Tried different combinations of default spindle and spindle 1,2, set it to different things. Sometimes briefly it would show the dropdown, but after restart it goes to default spindle only again.
After using laser spindle does not work. It shows “spindle on”, but it does not turn. I saw that there was a bug in firmware 6 months ago. Does anybody know if it was fixed?
When I switch SLB-EXT off with the switch the laser starts to fire in pulses like every half a second! I switch SLB it on and it stops. It looks like even when the board is switched off there still some current leaking to the K60 adapter board and it fires the laser. Very scary and dangerous.
No, even though I’ve got the machine just a couple months ago it came with 20230917 firmware. Do I need to flush it with the latest one?
BTW the issue with the laser firing by itself seems to be related to LaserTree. If the adapter board is disconnected the laser fires. I briefly checked SLB-EXT laser output with oscilloscope; it seems to be normal and there is no output when board is switched off.
@novos40 FWIW, I have the lasertree 20W v2. I believe that it is a well made unit, but I had firing issues with it early on. Unfortunately, I bought it from amazon and didn’t get to test it until the return period was over. I went back and forth for weeks with lasertree support. I will say that they were responsive. However, all they ever did was ask me to conduct more and more tests. These tests required me to have an oscilloscope and a volt meter, and be willing to make test wires. I have the volt meter and would have been willing to make test leads,but it was clear to me that their tech demands would never end. So, I told them that they had achieved what I believed was their objective. I gave up.
I got help from another member here, who is an electrical engineer and who had helped me in the past. With is help, I got mine to work.
My only advice is to return it if you can. Your problem is not the same as mine, so my solution - which I seem to have finally found - will not solve your issue.
I’m sorry that I cannot be of any help.
I was able to solve most of my problems, but not all
Spindle/Laser selection problems were solved by gSender and firmware upgrades to the latest versions (thanks SL for support)
Laser firing by itself was solved by adding 2.2 kOhm pulldown resistor at the adapter board input (see attached jpeg)
If anybody is interested, I used oscilloscope to check the signals (see attached bmp files)
10.bmp and 15 bmp when board is disconnected
13 and 14 are PWM off/on without pull-down resistor
15 disconnected board with pull-down resistor
16 PWM on with resistor
Yellow line is PWM and blue is 24v, both relative to GND
As you can see the main problem is very low quality of 24v power. Lots of noise. Resistor improved things significantly, but not completely. I could add some capacitors to further suppress the noise, but I don’t have time to experiment with different capacitance values. I’ll just add a full blown DC EMI filter and hopefully be done with it.
Laser Tree is indeed responsive (takes a day or two to get a response) and trying to help, but you need to check their responses for correctness. They suggested to add 100 mkF capacitor between GND and PWM which is way too much. In the next email they apologized for mistake as they meant 100 nF which makes much more sense. I’ll probably add the capacitor too. Hopefully it will solve the remaining problem of red cross flashing randomly. As they explained the red cross and laser are mutually exclusive so red cross should be on when laser is off and vise versa. I guess the reduced noise is not enough to fire the laser, but still enough to make red cross blink.
So the laser itself seem to be well built (still need to try it out and cut something), but power brick is of very low quality and there is no noise filtration. The PWM signal from SLB seems to be good.
I’ll update whether DC filter will solve the problem for good.
@novos40 Thanks much for this. I’ll be watching to see your results when you put the DC filter on. Mine is still intermittently good, so I can use all your results to improve it, I’m sure.
