Hardware recommendation

Hi,

Sorry for the lame question but having a hard time to get a full understanding of hardware that I should buy,

What laser kit/setup would you get that works great with laserweb that can engrave on Metal 316L as low as 0.1mm? I can only see recommendation on controller firmware on github.

I am looking for the most stable one out of the four bellow, both from a software but also physical. Any experience on something that is implemented in a heavy used environment?
image

Big thanks!

Here are three resources to help you get started:

K40 Laser: Getting Started

For the controller board, there is a list of supported boards on the github releases page of grbl-LPC:

I would suggest an original Smoothieboard or a Cohesion3d Remix (both 32bit LPC1769). ATmega328 and ATmega2560 are too slow for engraving. ESP32 is somewhare in between.

HINT: Grbl-LPC doesn’t support external lc displays.

I built a (somewhat modified) Lasersaur with an 80 W tube. It has been installed for nearly three years at my local hackerspace, and is being used by dozens of users.

The initial hardware was an Arduino/Raspberry Pi combination, but the current version consists of an MKS-SBASE (Smoothieboard clone) running grbl-LPC, an APU2 running lw-comm.server (under Debian), and a custom designed PCB that implements hardware interlock for the laser enable (so that the laser cannot fire if the lid is open or the chiller is not running). Users access LaserWeb by connecting to the machine’s IP, so they don’t need to install anything on their own PC.

We were plagued by electrical noise issues for a long time that caused the USB driver to reset, but that was resolved by changing grbl-LPC to use the second serial port and connect that to an actual serial port on the PC board.

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Cool setup. Thanks for reporting.