DVD to Laser Engraver

Step 1: Picking Up the Materials and Tools !

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Here's a short list of materials:

Mechanic:

1. DVD-R, from these we're going to salvage:

1. Laser Diode
2. Linear movement modules
3. Screws
4. The cases
5. Plastic
2. (Optional) 90° Braces

Electronic:

1. Arduino Uno or NANO

2. EasyDriver (x2)

Tools:

1. Common electronic tools (Pliers, Screwdrivers, Soldering iron, etc)

 2. Dremel
3. Bubble level (Or similar)

Step 2: Taking Apart the DVD Burners

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This is the fun part, taking everything apart!

This is really easy i'll explain over here the general steps and let the photos do the work:

1. First you need to put something strong but thin (Like a needle, or a strong clip) in the
hole that the DVD drives have on the front, not the big hole (the jack for audio), the little
 one. It needs to be strong because some drivers maybe jammed or just don't want to
cooperate.
2. If everything went fine, the tray should pop open. Here i recommend taking the lid of the
tray so you can take the whole front out as shown in pictures 3 and 4. To take the lid off
you need to push it slightly upwards and away from the driver. It has little grooves that
you can see inside to guide where you need drive your force
3. After that if you take the bottom screws the whole case should come off (Picture 5) and
you'll be left with 2 parts: A plastic mechanism and a metal case. Put the case away for
now, and save the front of that driver that you just took.
4. Now what you see in pic 6 is the core of all this. This linear movement modules (From
now on LMM) are our future X-Y and maybe Z Axis. To get this out you need to remove
all the ribbon cables attached to them. Ribbons have their unique way of being attached ,
some have little locks that you need to flip up, others you need to flip the locks to the
"front" (like if you opened a drawer), other just the blue tape that you need to pull and the
whole ribbon comes right off.
5. After that unscrew all the screws and then you need to pull it upwards like shown in
picture 11, it has little rubber supports so you'll feel a little resistance, but its ok. This
aluminum structure that you have now has a little carriage where the laser diode is in.
This carriage varies a lot from model to model so you'll have to see for yourself how to
take it apart, its not very easy but not very hard, sadly i didn't took any pictures of me
doing it because when i found out how to take the diode i've already dismantled it the
whole thing. Try NOT to break the (plastic/sometimes metal) carriage since that is going
to be the support to move the axis.
6. But wait, There's more! There's still a little DC motor that's in charge of opening and
closing the tray, along with a (sometimes optical sometimes mechanic) endstop, and a
led, so feel free to salvage those as well. To remove the DC motor you first need to take
the leash off as shown in the last picture.

Step 3: Testing the Loot!

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Now , from each driver you should've obtained

 1 LMM (Linear movement modules with STEPPER motors)

 1 DC Motors
 1 DVD laser diodes
 1 Full Case (Front, bottom plate, and the back case)

This is a great time to test if they actually work, because dismantling is a lot of fun, but we're
here to create!

Now to test the LMM, you can only move them with your fingers and see if they run smoothly,
you'll notice that if you run the carriage the way of the thread of the motor it spins the motor and
the carriage runs butterly, but , if you run it the other way it does a clack-clack-clack and jumps
the threading of the shaft of the motor. It's okay, it doesn't mean its broken, only that we're
moving it from where we shouldn't, so just check that isn't broken anywhere and that it goes
from bottom to top.

In order to test the whole LMM we need the electronics part working so we can now only check
that the steppers are ok and hope that they work. To check the steppers you need to put your
tester/multimeter in the resistance setting (The one with the Ω [OHM]) and measure between 2
pins of the stepper. Go with pairs you need to find 2 pairs of pins with a little resistance (usually
between 6 and 10 Ω, being the most common 6Ω and 8Ω). Once you find them mark them. (You
could solder the ribbon cable now if you want too!).

Now you should have 2 LMM that run well and have their motors identified, these ones are
going to be our new XY Axis!

Step 4: Building the Structure

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This, this right here is the big step, this was the time consumer for me.

The structure in itself isn't very hard, but it has to be precise in order for the laser engraver to be
precise as well. So i spent a lot of time watching if it was square or not, if it was leveled etc. I
really recommend doing that because the results are great after, i get REALLY precise images,
basically i get what i put on the pc.
Now for the base structure i put to cases on top of each other on a L shape, i got one that had a
fat bottom (no pun intended) in order to sit flush on top of the other one. After i re-checked that
they sat square to each other, i drilled a couple of holes on the fat base of the top one, that went
straight thru the one in the bottom, and put a couple of screws there. After i put the nuts on the
screws the structure was quite sturdy.

After that i measured how much space i had left for the LMM and marked it as shown in picture
1. Then i grabbed one of my modules and marked where the holes should be and drilled them. I
Placed my LMM very close to the "X case" almost touching it, because the part that moves sits
quite away from that wall so there's no problem.

From here i secured the Y axis to the Y case, checked several times that it was leveled (Pictures
4,5) and measured where the X LMM would sit on its case so they cover each other movements.
After that i just repeated the process for the X Axis.

When the 2 axis where on place, i started building the plates that will hold the Laser (X Axis),
and the material to be engraved (Y Axis). You can see on the pictures 10 to 15 how i designed
the plate for the laser. Basically i picked a long piece of wood and glued it to the Y Axis
carriage. Be careful about gluing this parts to the carriage because i did the same on the X axis
and had a lot of troubles as you will see on the following steps. On the Y Axis there were no
problems gluing because it had to withstand little weight. So i put on top of that wood another
one of the same length but with lot of holes in order to reduce weight and, being able to grab
different types of laser modules with easy exchange between them.

For the Y Axis platform, i did a similar piece of wood the one from the X Axis and glued it to
the carriage, then on top of that one placed a square one, and in top of that one i placed another
square one (this one made of metal). I used this layout because, i needed a small piece in order to
glue it to the carriage but i wanted a big space so i needed a "buffer" piece in order to do that.
Later i found out that i could've built a piece in a kinda of stretched X Shape in order to do this
whole thing with just 2 pieces, the X one and the rectangular one. If i have some free time i'll
upload it later.

When you have built both platforms, put everything on place and see if its square like in the last
picture, if it is, Great! If it's not (it happens to us all), see how much of a difference you have, if
its little (but beyond tolerance) add washers until falls within tolerance. If the difference its too
big that you cant save it with washers, see if adding springs with the screws helps you level
everything.

Now that we have a sturdy structure, lets go dig into the electronics!

Step 5: Electronics!
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This part is relatively easy, it's divided in this little steps:

1. Prepare the motors

2. Load the software into the Arduino
3. Test the Arduino + drivers + motors

Prepare the motors

Most of these motors have 4 wires corresponding to 2 coils, so we have to find which ones
correspond to which coil. We've done this in STEP 3, but i'll just quote myself how to do it now:

To check the steppers you need to put your tester/multimeter in the resistance setting (The one
with the Ω [OHM]) and measure between 2 pins of the stepper. Go with pairs you need to find 2
pairs of pins with a little resistance (usually between 6 and 10 Ω, being the most common 6Ω
and 8Ω). Once you find them solder the ribbon cable and leave the other end with bare wire for
now. You can ,if you want, solder pinheaders temporally in order to be able to put them in a
breadboard.

I'll include in this step the NEED for an external power supply, as you may have noticed it, the
easydrivers have an input for a separate power supply for the motors. This is because the arduino
CANT handle the current that the motors handle, nor the voltage. In this case this motors work
fine with 5v and 12v (They heat a lot faster so beware), still you need an external powersupply
because they draw much more current than the arduino.

Load GRBL into the Arduino

First of all, when i first plugged in my arduino NANO my computer didn't recognize it, i have no
idea why, it needed some set of specific drivers for the nano, so i had to search for them. These
ones worked for me, im on Windows 7 64 Bits.

2016-03-24:

The original Nano has a standard USB chip that's recognized by Windows. But a lot of the Nano
clones (the ones that only cost a few bucks) use a different interface chip called a CH340 that's
much cheaper but isn't recognized by Windows--so you have to find and load drivers for it.
Usually it's no problem but I've seen reports that some brands of laptop just never recognize the
chip even with drivers.

Thanks TimothyJ999 for the insight! I've also added the driver to this step, if you need it and
can't find it! its the CH341SER rar file!

Now we need a software to control the easydrivers in the arduino, and some kind of interface
with the computer so we can send the GCODE of the thing that we want to engrave.

For the software i've used GRBL 0.9f, heres the link to the git proyect so you can download it

https://github.com/grbl/grbl

When you download the files from the GRBL git Proyect you'll see that you end up with a bunch
of folders like in my last photo. They all work, but have little enhancements or changes here are
the most important things that you need to know:

 Those folders that say Arduino UNO will also work with arduino NANO since they
share the same pinout
 There's a major change in the versions >0.9f and that is that they added a spindle speed
variation Pin (this is used if you want to modulate the pulse to your Laser so it doesn't
draw a lot of current, or if you want to control the speed of a rotary tool, like a dremel)
This is important because in the prior versions this pin was called "Spindle enable" and it
was on a different PIN, so be careful.

The pinout for the arduino NANO i read it on this instructable

https://www.instructables.com/id/GRBL-Pinout-Arduin...

For the interface i'm using this one named GRBL Controller 3.6.1, i don't recall where i
downloaded it, but its free, so look for it.

Test the Arduino + drivers + motors

Now its time for our very first test!! This is when we see if our baby moves, or if we created an
abomination. You don't need to do this steps like this, but i've found out that this order minimizes
the chances of burning anything so, feel free to follow it!
 1. Plug in the motors to the EasyDrivers
2. Plug in the External Power suplly to the EasyDrivers but dont turn it on yet.
3. Connect the EasyDrivers to the arduino
4. Power on the external power supply
5. Connect the arduino to the PC
6. Open and Connect the GRBL software

You should see something like this:

$0=10 (step pulse, usec)

$1=25 (step idle delay, msec)
$2=0 (step port invert mask:00000000)
$3=6 (dir port invert mask:00000110)
$4=0 (step enable invert, bool)
$5=0 (limit pins invert, bool)
$6=0 (probe pin invert, bool)
$10=3 (status report mask:00000011)
.............

This is the configuration for your machine, with the default values so, before we send some
commands be careful, we haven't configured anything about the steppers , so with these values
its very likely for our axis to move a lot more than what they should and in different directions.
So if your structure is fragile, or the motors are skip this step and do the configuration first. If
you just want to see them move then send some commands !!

If you did everything right, it'll move, really fast and probably not in the direction that you told it
to move (For example you tell the X axis to advance 1mm and it goes the other way 100mm).
Don't Fret ! We haven't fine tuned anything yet!

In order to callibrate it properly, you can use this page:

https://github.com/grbl/grbl/wiki/Configuring-Grbl...

Here's my final configuration:

$0=43.300 (x, step/mm)

$1=43.300 (y, step/mm)
$2=43.300 (z, step/mm)
$3=200.000 (x max rate, mm/min)
$4=50.000 (y max rate, mm/min)
$5=50.000 (z max rate, mm/min)
$6=200.000 (x accel, mm/sec^2)
$7=50.000 (y accel, mm/sec^2)
$8=10.000 (z accel, mm/sec^2)
$9=50.000 (x max travel, mm)
$10=50.000 (y max travel, mm)
$11=200.000 (z max travel, mm)
$12=10 (step pulse, usec)
$13=0 (step port invert mask:00000000)
$14=0 (dir port invert mask:00000000)
$15=25 (step idle delay, msec)
$16=0.020 (junction deviation, mm)
$17=0.002 (arc tolerance, mm)
$19=0 (report inches, bool)
$20=1 (auto start, bool)
$21=0 (invert step enable, bool)
$22=0 (invert limit pins, bool)
$23=0 (soft limits, bool)
$24=0 (hard limits, bool)
$25=0 (homing cycle, bool)
$26=0 (homing dir invert mask:00000000)
$27=25.000 (homing feed, mm/min)

I calculated the values for :

$0=43.300 (x, step/mm)

$1=43.300 (y, step/mm)
$2=43.300 (z, step/mm)

Like this:

1. Put a number in the neighborhood of what you think it might the correct (for example 50
steps/mm)
2. Send an order to move the axis a fixed amount (for example 10mm)
3. Measure how much the axis really moved, (for example, the axis moved 15mm)
4. Calculate the error this way : e= (desired movement / real movement) (in this case e=
0.666....)
5. Multiply the error that you got, with the original number, (in this case
50*0.666...=33.333...)
6. Repeat with the new value (33.3333) and adjust until satisfied.

Attachments

 CH341SER (Windows Driver for NANO).rar

Step 6: Creating the Laser Module (with Driver)

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Remember how we found and identified the diode when we were taking the DVD drivers apart?
Well now it's time to salvage that diode from the carriage.

Beware:

This types of lasers are usually class 2-3 read it on the case of your DVD driver to know more.
What does it means? Well for this classes it's HAZARDOUS to watch it directly. Also, we're
using this laser to engrave wood, melt plastic and more, what do you think it can do to your
eyes? Please be careful.

More info on laser safety:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_safety#Classif...

Now, as i said before, carriages vary a LOT so feel free to hack your way thru until you get the
diode, but don't break the carriage cause that's where the plates are mounted!

Once you got a hold of it, it can look like picture 1,2,3, there are lots of diodes, and lots of
pinouts, so beware when you look up in the internet for laser diode pinout, because i thought that
they all shared the same pinout and then i found out they didint, like in picture 4. But by that
time i had already burned like 5. In the end i found a diode like the one from the last picture that
worked fine.
Now, when you have the correct pins, solder some colored cables to them, isolate them with
some shrinking tube, or tape, and then if you are totally sure put a drop of hot glue or something
to add a little bit of toughness.

I don't have it pictured but i got a cheap laser that had a similar module to the "Aixiz module"
that is so popular, and disassembled it and put my diode with my cables in it. Before you close
the module, be sure to tie a knot to the cables so if someone pulls the cables the strain is done to
the knot and not to the soldering!.

Step 7: Designing and Building the Mainboard

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This step even thou it has a ton of pictures if quite easy if you ever designed and built a board
before. If you haven't and you have no idea probably its going to cost you a lot to design it, not to
build it because that's quite straight-forward. But if you have little knowledge of electronics it's
really hard to come up with a decent design. If you do decide to design it yourself, bear in mind
that the pinout for the arduino nano its the same that the one in the arduino uno, here's an
instructable about it https://www.instructables.com/id/GRBL-Pinout-Arduin...

That being said, i'll attach my final design in eagle (it has a little module that is the Laser driver),
if you do use it, please dont erase my name!

To design this i thought to make all modular, a module for the laser driver, each easydriver is a
module on itself, and then the arduino is the last module, so the board only needed to connect the
modules with each other. Later i saw that the Ramps board does something very similar, it has a
slot for the arduino a slot for each driver etc etc, so it was a quite a nice surprise when i found
out.

How to build a board:

There are a ton of better instructables over here about how to build them, so i'll just lay out the
overall steps on how to do it, and let the images do the work. Although if you have any doubts
feel free to ask them!

1. Print your design on glossy paper, it doesn't matter the grams of the paper. Thin paper is
good (not REALLY thin thou)
2. Now polish your copper board, use a steel wool, that has thin threads. It needs to be
mirror polished.
3. Clean the board with alcohol and don't touch it with your fingers.
4. Paste the printed design on your board with the printed side touching the copper side of
the board. Use as little tape as you can to paste them
5. Preheat an Iron to the max (usually its the setting for Jeans), when its hot enough, press
the iron firmly for a couple of seconds on the design.
6. Move the iron slowly around the design until you can see it from the side that you are
ironing
7. Drop it on water and let it rest for a while. Move it from time to time
8. When the paper starts to peel, carefully help it with your fingers or a very soft toothbrush
(Not used of course)
9. When you peel the paper, it doesn't matter if it breaks or if it comes out in one piece
(which is great) its very important to check if the design transferred it correctly. This
step is crucial because a couple of minutes invested here in inspection can save you a tons
of hours later on rework. Check if everything has transferred and if it hasn't remark it
with a permanent marker. If a big % of the design didin't transfer, like 20%, then just
polish up , and do it again.
10. After you checked that everything is how its supposed to be, drop it on the acid !! This
acid its not very dangerous to the skin but you need to wear proper protection like gloves
and such. It can be lethal if ingested or inhaled etc etc, so again, beware.
11. If the acid is very new (you haven't used it for other boards) you should see little bubbles
forming up, I don't know whats the chemical reaction that's happening but its so
aggressively eating the copper that its releasing bubbles, so keep an eye on it.
12. To further speed up the process you can heat a little the acid, or move it constantly, or put
bubbles in it, like with a fish tank.
13. When the uncovered parts have no more copper, take the board, clean it a little and see if
it has ate all that it had to eat and nothing more. If there are some parts that still have
copper, dip it again in the acid and watch it closely. If overate some routes, well, it
depends on the damage, if its a veeeery small track maybe you can bridge it with a little
string of copper wire and solder, but its not very easy. If it ate a lot of tracks, you'll have
to do it again :(
14. If everything went ok, its time to drill all those little holes, be careful when drilling
 15. Now that we have our copper tracks and holes drilled, you can put a """silk mask"""" if
you want the same way before polishing the tracks. I do this because it looks really
professional. Just line up the silk mask with the holes drilled and do the same
ironing+water again.
16. After this, polish the now transferred design and put a layer of flux on each side to protect
the copper from rust and such. Let it cure.
17. Check for continuity in very close tracks or places that raise you suspicion. See if tracks
touch each other now because if you found out when you plug it in and you see that foul
smoke, its too late
18. Now all that its left is to solder the components from smallest to largest so they don't
move when we solder them. And Voila! we have our board!

Attachments

 laser.brd

 laser_driver.sch

Step 8: Software, First Test!

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By now we have our pretty sturdy machine, with the firmware on the arduino and the software
on the computer, its time to learn a little bit on how to use it and how to calibrate it!

I strongly recommend if for this tests you can attach a marker of some kind to the machine
instead of a laser, because its much more visible the flaws or deviations. Also you can watch it
without goggles or anything.

Now first of all, we plug in the aux power supply, and the USB from the arduino to the PC then,
we open our GRBL Controller and we choose the right port and Baud Rate (this we can look it
up when we downloaded the GRBL firmware for our arduino, the default is 115200) hit Connect,
if everything is ok you should see the machine configuration again as we saw it on the tests for
electronics.

Now now, to manually move this machine is really funny and everything....... for about 10' after
that we want to put some images to engrave! In order to do this we're going to need a couple of
things:

 A software that can send GCODE to the machine(we have that one already, its the GRBL
Controller)
 A software that can transform an image into a path (i use GIMP)
 A software that can transform PATH to Gcode (I use an extension for GIMP)
 An image

Now, the only thing hard to find is the software that transforms path to Gcode, i use the one that
this instructable uses (as a matter of fact i used a lot of stuff from this instructable haha):

https://www.instructables.com/id/Pocket-laser-engra...

After that, what i do is this:

1. Create a new image in gimp that is 43 x 43 mm

2. Open an image in gimp (preferably Lineart, for example, pusheen lineart, slayers lineart,
etc)
3. Resize the image to fit the gimp canvas
4. Right click the image and press "Trace BMP"
1. This is the part where if you chosed a lineart image you wont have any problems
5. Tweak the levels until you're left with a vector that fits your needs
6. Select that vector and press in the path tab "Object to path"
7. Select from the extensions "Laser Engraver" "Laser" press accept,et voilá you have the
gcode of your image
8. Open GRBL controller, connect to the machine
9. Select the gcode that you've just created
10. Send it and watch it burn! (the image of course