Link: https://github.com/hstarmans/firestarter/

Building a high-speed polygon laser scanner from scratch is a fantastic engineering flex, but reproducing one has always been a barrier for the average maker. Previously, if you wanted to build this specific ESP32/FPGA-driven polygon scanner, you had to source and modify a custom Felix 3D printer frame. It was a brilliant proof-of-concept, but hardly accessible.

Now, the project has undergone a massive overhaul, and the entry barrier just hit the floor: the new hardware is designed as a direct, drop-in extension for the ubiquitous Vevor CNC3018 Pro. You replace the controller board but keep using everything else; power source, spindle, fan, encasing, frame.

By targeting one of the cheapest and most widely available desktop CNC machines on the market, anyone can now turn a standard 3018 frame into a high-speed, closed-loop laser scanning platform. Here is a look under the hood at what makes this new iteration so impressive.

Consolidation: 4 Layers and No More Ribbon Cables

The previous architecture relied on a complex two-board setup for the control electronics: a compute module and an extension board. Those have now been beautifully merged into a single, unified 4-layer PCB. Moving to 4 layers allowed for proper, unbroken ground planes—an absolute necessity when you have an ESP32-S3 blasting Wi-Fi, a Lattice uP5k FPGA switching at high frequencies, and stepper motor drivers all crammed onto an 88x70mm footprint.

Interestingly, the designer leaned heavily on AI to assist with the board’s power management and component selection. From sizing the correct PTC resettable fuses for motor inrush currents to calculating thermal via arrays for the FPGA’s exposed pad, AI was used as a sounding board to bulletproof the power tree.

The FFC Lifeline: Keeping the Optics Pristine

While the brains of the operation have been completely overhauled, the project made a very smart design choice: the laser head remains completely separate.

The delicate optical assembly—housing the polygon mirror, the high-speed laser, and the photodiode—sits on its own dedicated board. It hasn't changed at all.
Integration is not possible as the laserdriver has to be close to the laser and opamps close to the photo diode.Instead of trying to integrate everything, the new 3018 control board connects to this pristine optical head using a clean, 20-pin Flat Flexible Cable (FFC). This connector can only be used so many times (up to 20 times) but is backward compatible and cheaply available.

Integrated Vision: Ditching the Pi

In the older setup, if you wanted machine vision for alignment or scanning, you had to tether a Raspberry Pi to the rig. That’s now a thing of the past.

The new board integrates a direct interface for an OV2640 camera module. By offloading the rigid, microsecond-level laser timing to the FPGA, the ESP32-S3 has the breathing room to handle the camera’s 24MHz data bus directly. It’s a leaner, cheaper, and significantly more elegant solution.

24 Volts and Future-Proofing

To get better performance out of the stepper motors and support beefier laser modules, the board's power architecture has been bumped up from 12V to 24V.
Vehor also supplies 24V DC power packs and not 12V. 

But the best part of this being a 3018 board drop-in replacement? It actually fits perfectly inside the stock Vevor CNC3018 Pro plastic enclosure and connectors. The hardware has even been provisioned to drive the stock 3018 spindle and cooling fans. While the software to run the spindle isn't quite finished yet, the silicon is there and waiting for a pull request.

By taking an advanced optical project and mapping it onto commodity CNC hardware, this project just moved from "cool prototype" to a platform that makers can actually build and iterate on.