Tulip; 101 things a boy can do with a 1610 mill / laser kit


Bought as a cheap-ish kit on AliExpress, this is my little mill. It came with a 5W diode laser and a 775 spindle.

I’ve been modding it occasionally for five years now, mostly used for PCB milling and drilling.

One important mechanical change is that I moved the Y-axis sliders+motor from above the lower frame rail to below it. The stock spindle with a ER11 collet left hardly any room between the tool and bed, I made some simple spacers that lift the bed back up to a suitable height with the inverted Y mechanism. I also decided to make them narrower so that I get 120mm of Y movement instead of the stock 100. This lowers rigidity, but I dont push this machine so it’s acceptable to me.

Some of the 3D printed (PLA) components are showing signs of age; and last year the spindle clamp snapped; it relied on flexing the 3-d printed clamp. So the machine just had another rebuild to install a new clamp piece and reinforce the whole carriage.


It’s not perfect but good enough for now, I have removed the laser mechanism, I wasn’t using it and it just complicated things.

I took this oppertunity to re-do the wiring again; the power supply side is a bit over complicated :wink:

There is a mains switch/fuse, then a permanent 5V power supply for the PI, and a 200W main supply with a big ‘power on’ front-facing switch. The spindle mosfet runs directly off that supply; but it also runs a big 24v buck converter for the controller board and steppers, plus a small 12v buck to drive the lights and fans.

On the left are three self-designed boards (made on this machine itself… of course) a power distribution board and two opto-isolated mosfets; one for the spindle, the other for the fans. The fan mosfet has a 100uf capacitor + 47k resistor on the gate, which gives it a 30s hold-on after the job finishes.

To the right is the ESP32 module + controller; this is one of Bart Drings early designs; and still going strong. It runs the latest FluidNC version and is permanently powered via USB from the PI. The PI is a model 3A (4 cores good! 0.5Gb ram bad!) with a simple 3.5’ waveshare touchscreen on it that just runs a console. It has mjpeg-streamer-experimental for the USB webcam and it runs LaserWeb, of course.

Top controls are a spindle-PWM led on the left, a fwd / rev switch, and a simple keyswitch so I can ‘safe’ the spindle. But I generally prefer the very simple on/off switch on the spindle cap.

There are a bunch of self-designed and printed parts; the power supply housings and spindle cap, the ‘mini cyclone’ is also my design but I’m ignoring since it sucks, or doesnt suck, if you get my drift. (a Mk-III version is on the way, with greatly incresed airflow to make good use of the 60x28 blower fan). The button box has run/hold/reset and probe terminals, it is detachable (magnets) so you can hold it in your hand… thumb hovering over the hold button… :wink:

The webcam will eventually be moved to a magnetic bracket that goes on the spindle clamp.

Fun fact: the spindle fwd/reverse switch is salvaged from a cordless drill.

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