Luckily I was able to use the two preexisting holes on the left, so I only had to drill the other two. Here’s the Cohesion3D board, oriented so the USB port is on the left so it will stick out the slot in the side of the laser cutter body (just like the stock FSL board did.) I marked where the holes needed to be drilled and then… I’ve X’d them out with a black marker so I knew they were the “old” holes. The orange shapes in the photo above show the holes the FSL board was using. I was able to reuse the plate by just drilling some new holes that matched the hole pattern of the Cohesion3D board. The metal plate is what the board was mounted to. There are 4 connectors for limit switches at the top, 2 connectors for the stepper motors on the right, and the “Laser Connector” on the bottom. Ībove is the stock Full Spectrum control board. The FSL 4th Gen is not a K40, but it’s similar in some ways, and I’d found others that seemed to have done the upgrade in the Google+ Cohesion3D Group. The Cohesion3D Mini board can function as a drop-in replacement for those cheap Chinese K40 laser cutters. It also meant that if I did it right I could ditch Windows and actually use a Mac (or Linux PC) to do my laser cutting. So besides me not wanting to use software that was possibly going to cost me $300, and Windows freaking out and ruining etching jobs, I thought replacing the controller and using other software seemed like a good idea. I was also informed that Full Spectrum requires new owners to “re-license” the software at $300 before they’ll accept any support requests. I first had to get the Windows PC on a network, and that meant I had to add a USB WiFi dongle, and I’m really not a fan of having old Windows 7 PCs connected to the Internet, but RetinaEngrave requires it. I should mention that the previous owner(s) didn’t seem to have any issues, but then, we all know how I get along with Windows.
I mean, it would work sometimes, but there were too many failures. Plenty of people run these laser cutters with the stock control board and use RetinaEngrave software running on Windows. Oh, I should probably explain why I wanted to replace the controller. Looking to upgrade? Get that board instead.) (If you are reading this in 2020 (or later) the C3D Mini has been replaced by the improved C3D LaserBoard. If I get time I’ll try to shoot a few new photos or do some illustrations. Some of the photos are terrible (sorry about that!) but hopefully I can explain things in text. I’ll do my best to walk through the process with this post. I replaced the existing Full Spectrum controller with a Cohesion3D Mini controller. I just completed the “upgrade” of a Full Spectrum 4th Generation Series 40w Hobby Laser.
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