Let me introduce my laser cutter

Hello everyone,
I am new here and I would like to introduce the laser cutter I am building. It is already working but I have to complete the housing.

It is a 80W CO2 laser bought on ebay. The cutting area is about 80cm x 60cm.









The first real thing I do, from thingiverse


The wood is a bit brown near the edges because of lack of air assist. At the firsts tests, I used a fishtank air pump but the flow rate was not sufficient to reduce the amount of smoke which colored the edges with a sticky and stincking thing...
So I tried to plug the workshop's air compressor to the head, the result was wonderfull. Sorry I have no image of that but I will post it soon.

Next step after completion of the laser cutter is to cut the Ultimaker frame and start a new 3D-printer adventure !
Another plan is to build a direct metal deposition 3D-printer from a combination of a GMAW and the ultimaker cinematic.

Voilà !

Mooi hoor.

Ik heb gisteren toevalig ook een co2 laser besteld op Ebay, een 40 Watt.
ga ook een laser cutter bouwen, lijkt me super handig en mooi afgewerkte resultaten te krijgen.
Bedankt voor de foto's, heel inspirend.

Gr Nonaak

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First Gen Mendel made by Adrian Bowyer
Controller: RAMPS 1.4
Extruder: Greg's Wade Universal Accessible Extruder
Firmware :Marlin
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MendelMax extra groot
RAMPS 1.4 grafisch display (diy)
Marlin
E3D v6
220V hotbed (diy)

Lang niks in 3Dprinting gedaan, begin nu weer hobby op te pakken.
Weer begonnen met:

Prusa Graber i3 "wood"
RAMPS 1.4 (mks tft28 v1.2 smart touch)
Marlin
E3D extruder v6 lite

MyMaker,

What are you using to control the axis? (on the electronic side). I am modifying a 40W CO2 laser I got that had terrible axis control and a garbage interface. I got the new axis working nicely, but haven't decided on processor/code yet.

Any suggestions?

That really looks amazing ! I guess it took quite alot of hours building that. Where did you buy the laser tube ?

Jeroen
Creative Use of Technology

It looks like it's just T-Slot Aluminum, some steppers, and a laser tube. Do you have documentation? How much did this cost you?

@LucasGelf

This looks a bit like one of theese:
[www.lasersaur.com]

Maybe you can fine some dokumentation over there.

Looks good, 80w CO2 is the popular spec . Wondering why there are some beer bottles on the working table.

Quote
lasercutscreens
...Wondering why there are some beer bottles on the working table.

... in some CNC-forums this type of beer-bottles is a 'normed' measuring sample for comparing sizes

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

If you use compressed air on your laser cutter as I do, it is recomended that the air be dryed first as compressed air can contain a lot of moisture. I run a propper air dryer, but I have seen some DIY dryers thats use radiators from old refrigeration equipment that work pretty good. Saves your mirrors getting condensation on them and cracking etc.

Cheers
Keith

What electronics and software tool-chain did you use?

Would you please elaborate a little on the controller, firmware and software you used.
I am trying to upgrade a K 40 CO2 laser, and could use a little help.

Beautiful cutter, but please bear in mind this post is from 2012 so the original poster probably doesn't look here anymore.

One thing about lasercutting MDF: just don't do it. It's the worst stuff I've ever seen. Even worse than acrylics. I don't know what crap they put in the wood, but it just gunks up everything in it's path. At my academy they don't even allow cutting of MDF anymore, also in the wood workshop they prefer other kinds of wood as the MDF dust apparently is very bad on your lungs/health.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2015 04:15PM by Ohmarinus.

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http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

Well, in its simplest form, it's just a lot of glue and wood mixed together. And glue-dust really is bad for you.