Electronically connecting non-standard equipment to a Trotec

[John Warren]

While the Trotec rep was here calibrating my laser, he mentioned the ability to connect other pieces of equipment to the laser (I believe he was saying it was done through the connector for the rotary). He gave an example of a customer who had used actuators to open the front door of the laser and slide the table out automatically when the job was done.

I had already been thinking of a mechanism that could speed up my production process if I could get it in functioning and have it be computer controlled. But I hadn't considered having it actually communicate directly with the laser sending/receiving signals to know when to move to the next stage. I've got a couple of different scenarios where this could be immensely useful.


I was wondering, if anyone here had any experience doing anything similar. Essentially connecting a non-standard piece of equipment to send/receive the same type of signals as a rotary but performing a different task in response to those signals.

If so, how complicated it something like this going to be? Are there any resources out there detailing the requirements of connecting something in that way?

[Scott Shepherd]

I know Universal's used to be easily "hacked", so to speak, but I've not seen any documentation on the Trotec being able to do that. However, with a $25 Arduino, you could do most anything you could think of. Either that or a Raspberry Pi and a little code in Python and you could be doing a lot of things.

[John Warren]

Could you connect the Raspberry Pi to the Trotec, or are you just saying it would be relatively easy to use it to control whatever mechanical system I set up?

I know some programming, but I've never approached a task that needed to manipulate hardware. This might be an excuse to do that - as well as an excuse to grab a Raspberry Pi... lol

Will probably be a while before I have time to work on it - unless I find someone else to work on it for me - but I'd like to have as much preparation done in advance (both as far as knowledge of what needs to be done and the proper supplies) so I can hit the ground running when I do have the time.

[Scott Shepherd]

Could you connect the Raspberry Pi to the Trotec, or are you just saying it would be relatively easy to use it to control whatever mechanical system I set up?

Relatively easy to use it to control whatever mechanical system you want to set up.

[Steve Morris]

I could do with the pin functions/voltage levels for the exhaust connector on the 300 to switch a non-trotec exhaust/filter with Job Control X.

Regarding other systems, yep a Pi would give controller handling for whatever process you want to add, not sure you could do it through the rotary connector as that basically replaces one of the axis drive controllers