Thinking of getting the Laser

I am considering getting the laser for my Longmill. Am I able to connect the laser if I am using an IOT relay, I think the relay uses the same connection on the Longboard for power?

Take what I say with a grain of salt because I don’t have the Sienci LaserBeam, I have a cheap Chinese one.

I unplug my router and vacuum from the IOT relay and plug in my air assist and exhaust fan when using the laser. Can’t remember if you built an enclosure or not but with my enclosure I have a separate exhaust that vents outside to help with smelly, probably bad for you, laser fumes.

What I know about the LaserBeam is just from reading the resource pages, I’d like to have one but $$. So I see the laser beam has it’s own power supply block and it’s own control board. The air assist is wired to the LaserBeam control box so you don’t need the IOT for that. The laser itself also gets its power from that control box. The PWM signal which control laser power comes from the LongBoard, connected to the spindle PWM which your not using if you have a router, and goes to the LaserBeam control box.

Long story short is I don’t think you’ll need the IOT for the laser unless you have an exhaust or something else that needs to run with the laser. You should be able to leave the IOT connected. You will want to make sure to unplug or shut of your router and vacuum if your laser code has M8 and M9 codes in it or you have gSender start and end blocks with those codes. Don’t want the router coming on when your trying to use the laser.

That’s my take on things. If I’ve misspoke about the LaserBeam hopefully someone will correct me.

Sorry Michael if I did not explain myself correctly, thought that the IOT was connected on the Longboard where the laser should be connected. I was wrong, I just checked on the IOT is connected to the coolant port. I should be good to go.

Does the V-Carve laser module work on the Sienci laser?

@GettingStarted It does, but I strongly suggest that you try the free trial before buying. I did and it showed me that I would not get my money’s worth. YMMV. :grinning:

I have the Vectric laser module and if I had to do it over again I would try the J-Tech GRBL post processor for Vectric which can be found here. I’m not sure if you can do photo’s with it, maybe Grant knows, but I use Lightburn for all my photo stuff and only use Vectric Laser Module for simple stuff when I don’t feel like using two programs.

Not sure if you plan on getting Lightburn but you pay a price to get it and get updates for like a year and then you can keep using the version you have but no more updates unless you pay again. My thoughts would be try the Laser Module trial and the j-tech post processors and maybe spend the money that you save on the Laser Module to get Lightburn.

Here is an example of what can be done with Lightburn. The photos are on ceramic tiles that I cut into circles and then used the Nortor White Tile Method which you can find tutorials on. I’m just getting to the point where I felt my laser photo’s where good enough to make something.

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What didn’t you like about it?

@GettingStarted It wasn’t so much what I didn’t like about it per se. I just didn’t believe that the price was worth what I would be doing with it.JTech offers a post processor for VCarve in both inch and mm for laser use. Between that and Ligbtburn, I can do more than the laser module offers for less cost. That said, the beauty of the module is that it is just like an additional two tool path options in VCarve, so it is very easy to use. That is why I suggest that you try the free trial before deciding.