Preface

Intention of this project PWM2Laser and associate documentation is to be an introduction how to realize a small electronic project useful in the CNC community. One of the ideas was to show easily in small steps how to create with the support of a CNC portal a printed circuit board (PCB) from beginning to the end by using available tools on the internet. This project uses a microcontroller, so also explanation how to program this small “computers” will be described inside this documentation.

I write the documentation not at the end of the project, but during each creation steps. I did my best to avoid mistakes, but errors may happen. By writing this preface, I just think how I changed a LED with a different color, so you will find in schematic different description for LED1. This happened, because I had no anymore red LED available on my workbench. Lesson learned, check first the material stock...

The project describes a PWM generator used for test and command a laser diode module. These laser diode modules available on market require a pulse width modulation (PWM) signal for operation. The microcontroller will be able, by reading position of a potentiometer and with the internal dedicated hardware module to generates the required PWM signal. Few security functions will be integrated in the microcontroller software.

This documentation is intended to be shared with my CNC community. I wrote directly in English to reach more people in the world. I hope this contribution will help you in your own CNC adventure.

Wish you good pleasure in the journey of this project.