Jeff,
I'm bringing this discussion from JTech here per your email. First Let me set up my system:
DIY CNC Machine
Mach 3
JTech 2.8 Laser and Driver
JTech PicConver board
PicLaser
Using A axis for laser.
The problem that I was having (and emailed Jay about) was the laser turning off during the running of a program. I was able to trace that problem to a loose plug at the Driver. I have the laser driver and the PicConver board located on a sliding drawer so that I can bring it out to turn on and watch the LED's but then slide it in when doing standard CNC work. The plug was loose enough so that it would loose connection. I then cut the plug off and screwed to the terminlas and have not had the laser shut off prematurely since.
I do still have question on some setups though. I will listed them individually.
1. Attached are pictures of my set up screens and a test burn of the grey scale. On the grey scale even though it looks like it does go from 0 to 255 the progression does not seem gradual and even to me.

- 20170822_111230.jpg (93.79 KiB) Viewed 8311 times

- 4.jpg (80.46 KiB) Viewed 8308 times

- 5.jpg (101.54 KiB) Viewed 8308 times
2. In the instructions for seting up the laser axis (in my case that is A), it shows the Acceleration as 30 and the Velocity as 100.2. However I have also read in some forum that all the axis should have the same Acceleration. My movement axis all have an Acceleration of 300 and a Velocity of 200. Should the A axis also have those settings?
3. I also design and engrave using Vectric Aspire. That Post Processor that I downloaded from JTech uses S command to turn laser to full power. I have Outpout 1 assigned to Pin 17 with Spindle disabled. Do I need to enable the Spindle and also assign it to Pin 17 in order to do this?
4. What is the relationship between the size of the focus spot of the laser and the pixel resolution in PicLaser?
5. The Instructions for the PicConvert says before running a program to turn laser on to full power and then off and then set A to 000. If the PicConvert board is plugged in all the time is this still neccesary or just when I start up for the day? Can this be put into the .txt program.
6. Even though I am used to haveing the Z axis going negative to route deeper into the material I struggle to remember to use the negative to go darker. What changes in the Dir and Step do I need to do to use positive number - say 0001 to 0256?
7. When engraving a vector and even something from PicLaser (see attachment of grey scale), the laser dwells at the start of each vector and creates a burn spot. In the Spindle / General Parameters I do have all four boxes set as 0 secs.
1. Attached is a picture of my set up screens and a test burn of the grey scale. On the grey scale even though it looks like it does go from 0 to 255 the progresion does not seem gradual and even to me.
Thank you for taking the time to look this over. Even though I havent attempted to picture engraving yet, I think I'm getting close on the setup and understanding some of the complexity.
George M
EDIT Looks like I can only attach 3 pics. I will add other 2 in another post.