We've learned a lot.........

Moshiboard V4.1

Whew! What a crazy month! On December 13th our laser converter board was featured on HackADay, since that time we have had nearly 17,000 hits on ChrisCircuits.com. The response from the DIY/hacking community has been amazing. We have sold out twice and the requests are still coming.

 During the rush to assemble, test, and ship boards out to everyone we have learned a lot about what it takes to support a product that has been shipped all over the world. The biggest thing we learned is that many laser cutters have been shipping with the above moshiboard. If you recall my previous posts and tutorials, we built the converter board based on a very similar (but slightly different) board. We learned that some of you had to, and may still have to, make a slight modification to use our converter board. I will try to describe the mod below:

The moshiboard v4.1 has an identical pin-out as the older black boards, the only difference is in the cable and power supplies they plug into it. My laser cutter came with a single power supply that supplied both 24V and 5V the cable from it can be seen below.

Cable from power supply

From right to left my cable has the following pin-out: GND, 24V, empty, 5V, laser control, empty. We've found that with the new 4.1 moshiboard the cable has this pin-out(right->left): GND, 24V, empty, empty, laser control, GND. The problem comes from the fact that our board uses the 5V supply to run all the logic on the stepper drivers and isolators. The moshi 4.1 must have added an on board regulator to do that. What that means is that if you have a 4.1 board you will need to run a wire from the 5V power supply (usually a little gold power supply) to the 5V slot in the connector. Also, you may notice that the 4.1 board had two ground wires populated. That is because in most of these laser cutters using this board, they have two power supplies and the grounds get tied together on the board. That means that you will need to tie your two power supply grounds together externally because the current version of our converter board doesn't have these pins connected. It is a quick fix that is easy to do. And it is going to get even easier..... The next batch of boards were designed knowing these limitations. The two ground pins are tied together on board meaning you will only need to run a wire to the 5V slot.We plan on shipping all future boards with the crimp insert and wire to help with the conversion. We debated on adding a 5V regulator to the board to make it completely compatible but didn't want the added expense and assembly time.


We also learned that our cool new feature on V1.1 didn't work..... Being fairly new to Mach3 I mistakenly used pin 15 as an output. Turns out pin 15 can ONLY be used as an input. Lesson learned. That meant our FET for controlling the 24V solenoid to control our air assist would need a little work.

Re-work to fix air assist

If you are a proud owner of a V1.1 board and would like to control a 24V solenoid air valve then this fix is for you. First, after you have removed the board from your machine, solder bridge the two center pins of U8 on the PC side of the board. (Near the U8 reference designator, pins 2 and 3) Then lift or cut-off pin 6 of U8. (The second pin from the bottom on the laser side, near the C18 designator) The above picture demonstrates this. Now your solenoid should be controlled by pin 14. The next batch of boards will reflect this change

Lastly, we have learned that shipping internationally is a PAIN. We wanted to offer cheap shipping so that everyone could enjoy the added power this board brings to their laser cutters but sometimes packages were taking over a month to get to their destination. We still don't have a good solution to this but the next batch of boards may have higher international shipping costs. We just want to make sure everyone gets their boards.

For those waiting on boards to be in stock, the next batch of boards should be here in about two weeks.

Again, a big thanks to the community. Your support has been very appreciated. We have been able to devote a little more of our time to some of our ideas and very soon we hope to be releasing our next fun product. (It isn't even remotely laser cutter related, you won't want to miss it)