Neje 30W Laser Install on My Diy Drawing Machine

In this Instructable, I will show you how I Installed a Neje 30W Laser on my Diy grbl drawing machine, the machine is Arduino Uno based with a Grbl CNC Shield.

My only experience with Lasers is with my Laserpecker Pro which is really good, no laser programs to fathom out, works off the mobile phone but has a size limit of 100mm x 100mm.

I want to be able to change between pen and laser fairly easily, and both the laser TTL and Pen servo use the Z+ pin on the shield so it should be pretty straight forward to come up with a switching device(Scratches Head).

The drawing machine is fitted with an Eleksmaker drawing module which works really well, and is easy to fit and remove from the 3D printed mounting block.

The machine is currently running on Universal G code sender Platform and at the moment I'm not sure what I need to work the laser, Laser grbl or Lightburn, Lightburn requires a subscription, these are 2 options.

Lasers are dangerous and should only be used when wearing the correct Laser safety glasses/goggles, even when carrying out test firing.

On with the Installation:

Neje 30W Laser module

Laser safety glasses/goggles

Heatshrink

Soldering Iron

Lead free solder

Dupont Female connector cables

The first process is to disconnect the drawing machine module at the shield, the connectors are Dupont female connectors, the Positive and Ground are picked up from the 5v supply on the shield and the Pen servo is on Z+, once removed we can put this to one side.

The Neje 30w laser comes with a sliding bracket so any fasteners would have to come from the back, there is a 5mm tapped hole in the bracket and a smaller tapped hole, these are vertical, the holes on my 3D printed mount are horizontal, I had a 5mm Allen head bolt and cut it to size, and just for a trial just mounted the laser using the one bolt, this works fine, I will 3D print a clamp as well and install using the other mounting hole, this will ensure the Laser stays Vertical but the laser is not like a router, there is no pressure so as long as its secured it will be fine, and easy to remove and re-fit the Pen Module.

I now need to temporarily secure the laser adapter board, this can go on the side of the laser module and can be held in place with Double sided tape.

Onto the electrics:

When I first started looking at Installing the laser, I looked online and there are a couple of Videos etc, but a lot of it was confusing, all I needed to know was which pin on the shield do I connect the TTL cable to from the Laser Adapter, It turns out that its the Z+ on some versions of the Protoneer Grbl shield this could be the spindle enable or SpEn as it is on the shield.

The Adapter board has 3 Inputs, you can choose any one of the Inputs depending on how you want to wire it, using connectors or in my case, I will use the screw terminal connections, the adapter board needs 12V positive and Negative and TTL which is Z+ on the Grbl shield I will solder a female dupont connector onto the Z+ cable, and also supply a ground to Gnd pin adjacent to the Z+ Pin.

A 4 Pin cable is supplied to connect the adapter board to the Laser and is clearly marked

For the moment, I've opted for a 3 way terminal block, this will have a 12v feed to it and also the TTL cable as well, this will supply the the Grbl shield and also the Laser adapter board.

I will get some 3amp terminal block and connect a 5v supply from the shield as well then when i want to use the drawing machine its just a matter of unscrewing a couple of cables or better still a switching device.

Power is supplied via a 12v Power Brick from an old Lap top

I made a better job of the connectors on the limit switches as well during the laser Install.

Time to Test the laser.

The Protoneer shield I'm using is Version 3, this definitely uses the Z+ pin to trigger the Laser as I tried the Spindle enable pin as well, and nothing happened.

I was pretty much confused between PWM and TTL but my guess is they both carry out the same function, the Neje Laser adapter board only has TTL so with everything wired up and the Laser having X and Y movement it was that time to see what happens.

With the Laser powered up and USB plugged into the Laptop, and safety glasses on I pressed the test button on the Laser adapter board, sure enough, the Laser worked.

After looking at various tutorials and getting more and more confused, I think the best option is just test under your own steam, the focus point is critical for efficient burning and speed and power settings are the other 2, the focus is factory set and should not need adjusting, but if it does then the knurled wheel on the laser is turned to achieve this,

Lasergrbl and Lightburn are 2 completely different programmes and there are plenty of tutorials out there, its just a case of testing with pieces of scrap wood.

I've only used the trial version of Lightburn for testing purposes, Its pretty much plug and play, ensure that the Shield and laser are powered up prior to plugging in the USB cable, then in the device set up choose a manual set up, select Grbl and follow the on screen prompts to add the dimensions of your work area, if the Comm port is not automatically selected then choose it, Lightburn will remember this.

Using Lightburn, I created some squares and using various degrees of power and speed, I set the laser off cutting some 3mm Balsa sheet which is all I had to hand, it kicked into Life which was good, nothing happened with the laser, there was a beam but no cut, looking into the Lightburn cut settings there is a constant power mode, I toggled that to on, and tried the cut again, this time it worked, we were creating smoke:)

This is a good way of finding power and speed settings, for cutting, the power in my case needed to be 100% with a slow cutting speed, 150mm/min and for engraving the power as low as 20% and speeds can be between 6000.00 and 9000.00mm/min

I had to play about with the height of the Laser for optimum cutting and engraving, once the height is confirmed then just make a little spacer when working with different thicknesses of material.

I was intrigued to try engraving an image, within Lightburn this is made easy, you select an image online, I opted for a black and white image of a Lion, Lightburn automatically sets the power and speed but I changed the power from 20% to 37.5% I thought 20% would have been to low, it would have been perfect, Maybe as low as 15% so next up, I did a fox, and this turned out really well one layer to engrave it and another layer to cut it out. this it did, was only scrap balsa but it worked.

Onto the assumptions.

Prior to setting out with this Laser Installation, I was well confused with the advice that was out there.

But using an Arduino Uno and a Grbl shield which cost virtually nothing by the way, you can create something which functions really well.

Ok I had to purchase the laser and it being 30Watt was £83 or $115 but there are cheaper options out there to get you started, the principal will be the same.

It Cuts, it Engraves, it engraved images which was awesome in itself, so in my opinion the TTL carries out the same function as PWM with various degrees of power to engrave the image.

Lightburn is a on a months Trial period then a subscription is needed, I will take this option as its a great piece of software for the laser, but there are other options out there.

To Clarify, The laser needs a constant 12v feed and the TTL is Z+ on the shield, I took a ground from the main iincomer connector on the shield to the Z+ GND as well, simples, the Z+ is conned to Pin 11 on the Uno which is a PWM pin thus creating the various degrees of power when engraving images etc.

I'm happy with the set up, I may at some point see if I can install it on the CNC machine for a bigger footprint as well, the CNC is Grbl so no reason why it shouldn't work and the Z axis will be there to adjust Laser Height.

I hope this Instructable explains how to Install and set up the Laser on a Cartesian style machine, it could work with a 3D printer set up as some have already done.

Thanks for looking.