I’d like some recommendations for selecting a laser and accessories. Here are some of the things I’d like, so I can make sure LW4 works well with them:
Cutting and rastering ability
A Z axis. It looks like this is needed for multipass cutting.
Rotary table. I have a 4" Sherline CNC rotary table, but that probably won’t fit.
I need these for safety:
A full enclosure which includes space for the above accessories. No holes for laser reflections to escape.
A filtered exhaust; don’t want cancer and can’t allow a smell to build up over time since I rent.
Laser-proof goggles during calibration. Need to be large enough to fit over glasses.
Is there any other safety gear I need?
I have a spare Smoothieboard and TinyG board to test with. I can also test with the GRBLshield from my Shapeoko.
You can use a cell phone to view the laser safely and zoom in to see details with no risk to your eyes, and others can see with no need for multiple goggles.
Z table is a plus but not necessary… it’s main use is for ease of focus at the surface of the material. It can be used for multi pass cutting of thick materials but because of the tenancy of the beam to be an hourglass shape with a convergence and divergence from the focal point you will end up with some angular Kerf at the top of the material when moving it closer to the focal lens. Best bet with cutting thicker materials is a longer focal length lens but you sacrifice power at the focal point with that. Which leads to multi pass cuts
If you purchase a CO2 laser, standard industrial safety goggles will do the trick. Acrylic will absorb the wavelength the laser puts out, that is why we can cut acrylic with it. And remember, a stray beam will be defocused greatly (lens is a standard 2" on most machines). By the time a stray beam gets to you the acrylic glasses will more than stop the beam and protect your eyes. All the CO2 lasers I have seen have small holes in the construction that in theory (if all the planets align, I win the lottery, and you find a flying pig) a stray beam could escape from, but generally it needs to be quite a large hole, or directly in the path of the beam if mirrors are out of alignment, before this becomes an issue. The Z axis table is a nice addition, but the same can be accomplished with an adjustable height laser head. I have one laser with a table and one without, but with an adjustable head. I find both are equal. The Z table is nice for doing larger objects such as boxes etc, where you need to move the Z axis a long distance. I built a manually adjustable one for the laser that cam with out it, but I prefer the motorized one on my other laser in that usage. Since you want to use it with LaserWeb, the controller would need to be swapped for a Smoothieboard, or grbl controller. And since you are one of the devs on the project, you know what it can do, and if it doesn’t do something, you can just code it There are a few good rotary table builds on Thingiverse that will fit a small machine like the K40, but are still usable on larger machines. Filtered exhausts are available, not sure on pricing, but I expect them to be as much as a good entry level machine itself. Hope my little essay helps, if you have any other questions, please feel free to ask. And thanks for all the hard work on Laserweb!
Sounds like you need an Emblaser 2!
It will have everything you need except for the rotary table.
We are just going into production so we couldn’t get you a machine for another month.
Contact me directly to discuss further if you like.
With 1/5th to 1/10th the power of a CO2 laser you cannot expect the same cutting and engraving speeds. It’s not designed to compete with a CO2 machine if pure cutting grunt is what you are looking for.
See our website for what is can do http://darklylabs.com/emblaser2
What type of machine does most of the LaserWeb community use? Diode or CO2? Do diodes produce a better image quality? It looks like Z axis is rare. Is rotary table rare? Are there differences in CAM optimization between diode and CO2?
The darklylabs site shows off some nice output, but I didn’t see anything comparing it to CO2 lasers. My google-foo failed me; pages I found searching for comparisons don’t really compare the two types.
I want to make sure I don’t go off in a hardware direction that makes it hard to reproduce what users run into.
@Todd_Fleming rotary is not rare on CO2 the reason many don’t use it in their K40 CO2 is that you need to unplug the Y axis. With Smoothie on the other hand you can just use any of the other available drives, mind that LW needs some codes still ( I think Peter already ask you about that). Z axis it is rare as many hee don’t have an easy drop in solution and the available one is to expensive. I used a Diode during most of LW1 and LW2 development, I had it on my cnc, at that time there was not multipass support so I could not play with that
There are a few good rotary table builds on Thingiverse that will fit a small machine like the K40, but are still usable on larger machines. Filtered exhausts are available, not sure on pricing, but I expect them to be as much as a good entry level machine itself. Hope my little essay helps, if you have any other questions, please feel free to ask. And thanks for all the hard work on Laserweb!