How to Turn Your Laser

Marker into a Pen Plotter

Lester Orense
November 2021 - Covid days
 This procedure is meant ONLY for those
machines that are running on GRBL/Arduino
-and-
are Cartesian coordinate type machines

I do not think it will work with Core-XY, SCARA,

Delta, etc.
Some changes are needed to be done on your
laser marker:
• Hardware
• Wiring for the R/C servo
• Arduino firmware - GRBL
• Laser gcode file
Hardware:
• Get a pen holder and replace the
laser module on your machine.
• If you don’t have a pen holder
maybe I can make a few pieces
soon.
Pen Holder Design for Laser Marker Machines
- the servo motor has been re-positioned so the entire unit can be easily mounted to laser
machines
Wiring
• On your penholder, there will be a 3-wire cable with connector
coming from the R/C servo
• Red wire - this is 5v supply and can be taken from the Arduino
• Black wire - this is GND or Ground or Common
• Yellow - PWM signal from Arduino to the servo
• Connect Red wire to Arduino +5v
• Connect Black wire to Arduino GND
• Connect Yellow wire to Arduino pin 11, the PWM signal
• On my Arduino shield which was made for GRBL0.9, Arduino pin 11 is actually
labeled “Limit Z-axis”
• Your laser PWM signal should have been connected to this same pin also
Arduino Firmware - GRBL (1/2)
• You will need to load a different version of GRBL on your machine
(You can always go back to what you have now, whenever you want
to)
• Go to your Arduino folder ---> libraries --> grbl
• Delete the grbl folder (Save it to a different location outside of
Arduino, so you can copy/paste it later when you go back to a laser)
• Download GRBL from this link --> https://github.com/cprezzi/grbl-
servo
• Unzip this GRBL version, then from the unzipped files, find the folder
"grbl". Copy this folder then......
Arduino Firmware - GRBL (2/2)
• Go to your Arduino folder ---> libraries
• Paste this new "grbl" folder inside "libraries" (this is why you needed
to delete the other grbl folder mentioned above)
• Now you can load this grbl egg-bot version into your Arduino.
• Launch Arduino IDE, then click on "File" --> "Examples" --> "grbl" -->
"grblUpload"
• Upload grbl again into your Arduino
• Once loaded, you now have the egg-bot/pen plotter version of GRBL
Changes to the GRBL Configuration, for pen
plotter
• $$30=180
• $$31=0
• $$32=0
Changes needed to the __.nc file
• Open your file in LaserGrbl and do as you normally do with a laser, up to the point when you are
just about to run, but do NOT run. Laser power set to 100
• Click on the tab marked “File” then “Quick Save”
• The saved file will have a name of _____.nc <---- notice the.nc extension
• Open this .nc file in Notepad (or some text editor)
• Once open, press <ctrl> h (find & replace)
• a window will pop up
• S0 --> replace with --> S0 G4 P0.2
S100 --> replace with --> S100 G4 P0.2
• Go to the bottom of the file, the last line and delete “M5” (sometimes the pen goes down again
with M5 in there, so delete it)
• Save the file <ctrl>s
• Open this edited ___.nc in LaserGrbl
• RUN!!!!
How to Go Back to Your Previous GRBL version
• Go to your Arduino folder ---> libraries --> grbl
• Delete the grbl folder
• Go to your previous grbl version, the one you deleted (saved) prior to
loading egg-bot grbl
• copy/paste your previous grbl version into Arduino --> libraries
• Launce Arduino IDE
• Click on "File" --> "Examples" --> "grbl" --> "grblUpload"
• Upload grbl again into your Arduino
• Once loaded, you are now back to your previous GRBL version
• You may need to edit the GRBL configuration again
FAQ
• Why do we need to load a different GRBL version?
• The PWM signal for R/C servos has a frequency of ~50Hz, while the default
PWM freq for GRBL is 1kHz (IIRC) or higher
• The egg-bot version of GRBL has the correct frequency for R/C servos
(-end-)