Laser Control | Synthetos Forum

Started by flipper on Dec 4, 2012 in grblShield Support. 2 replies, last activity Dec 23, 2012.

flipper Dec 4, 2012 #

I would like to control a laser using the Arduino/GRBL Shield, but not sure how to go about this. I do not need the Z axis so I was hoping to control the Laser using M3 and M5 g-code commands to turn the laser on and off but I do not know who to wire the laser so that those commands will work... Basically which two pins can I use?

The Laser driver I have can have 5v or 12v power supplied, so I could wire straight into the Arduino using PWM or possibly into the GRBL shield where the Z-axis motor connects, but either way I am not sure which pins to use. Has anyone had any experience with this?

flipper Dec 4, 2012 #

So I had part of the answer all along on one of my tabs:

"I think the easiest thing would be to connect a relay to your laser and control the relay from the spindle pin. Then you could use the normal G codes M3 (enable spindle) and M5 (turn spindle off) to control it."

Looking at the pinouts, the "Spindle Enable" is pin 12, which helps a lot, but which pin on the GRBL shield would it be?

RileyStaff Dec 23, 2012 #

Did you look here?

https://github.com/synthetos/grblShield/tree/master/hardware/grblshield_v2_schematic

Hope that helps.