Need help with shopbot control software - start spindle confirmation dialog

[Marc F. Lupien]

The thing is I am trying to help a guy that installed a laser bought from JTech. They suggest interfacing it through output switch #5. Personally, my laser is interfaced with PWM and works great but the guy is not good enough in electronics to hook it up that way by himself and he lives a couple thousand miles from where I am... so I try to make it work with the output switch.

The weird thing is: on his system, the spindle start dialog comes up AFTER output #5 has turned ON so it burns the material without moving, waiting for him to confirm the dialog... Still trying to figure out that.

[SparksStudios]

I can second the issue.

I’m getting exactly the same thing trying to run a J-tech laser module on my Buddy 48. I’ve come to the conclusion that the ‘Spindle start’ prompt is built into the core program and there is no public accessible software switch to bypass it. Probably a legal issue.

I’m going to work-around the problem by running the laser on its own stand alone frame.
Not ideal space wise, but I’ll have more control over the laser then I would going thru the Shopbot controller.

-Taylor

[Marc F. Lupien]

I agree. It seems the control software pops up this dialog before switching on some outputs but not all of them. A stripped down test SBP file showed that the dialog shows up on switch 5 but not on 6 nor 9. It depends on the output switch.

The person I was trying to help ended up moving his laser from switch #5 to #9 I believe.

On my machine, I use a PWM output from the control card to interface my laser. I had to put some electronic components in between my laser and the shopbot card to keep things electrically isolated (optoisolators) since its not hooked up to a relay but the 'spindle start' dialog does not come up automatically. Instead, I created my own confirmation in my post processor.