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Ambihelical Hexnut posted:Holy gently caress I'm so sick of arduinos and ramps boards. Cheap and plentiful are the only two qualities that justify their existence at this point; it is 100% worth another 500 bones for a DSP controller that actually loving works if it means I don't have to spend two days trying to fix the myriad configuration errors that stack so precariously with these things. What about LinuxCNC? People have been working on a version of that for the Beaglebone. Ambihelical Hexnut posted:Cutting plywood is a bitch. The glue, fillers, and layering make it repel laser magic or something I don't know. When a material's thickness or plywoodianism becomes more than your laser can take, multiple passes may be in order. Ideally, with a proper controller, you'd fix the workpiece in place at a focus depth even with the top of the material, and with each pass your power z-table would raise the material up a little bit. I, unfortunately, just removed my power z table so I was a lazypants trying to make a quick pair of stands out of cheap plywood I have laying around. Or get a more powerful laser: https://vimeo.com/123456664 I've been looking into building a Lasersaur, and I was wondering: Would it be feasible to mount a focusing mechanism to the lens/nozzle unit? Most laser cutters move the table, but putting that into a Lasersaur size machine would make it way bigger than I can handle. The added mass shouldn't be too bad compared the the existing gantry, should it?
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Sep 16, 2015 22:21
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Ambihelical Hexnut posted:You've stumbled on to the fundamental more money = better than problem of everything. The BOM for the Lasersaur is using a $1200 tube with a $600 LPSU and a $400 chiller. I'm using a $150 tube with a $79 LPSU and an aquarium pump in a home depot bucket full of water. I'll probably put a 60 watt (to the lasersaur's 100) tube on my big machine when I get around to replacing the spare 32W. Does the lasersaur not already have a focusing mechanism on the linear rail mounting its lens head? I don't see why you couldn't do that; remember at higher powers CO2 lasers tend to get better at cutting and worse at engraving, and if cutting is what you're after then you'll pretty much never be limited by your gantry speed unless you're doing something incredibly complex in very very thin material. In that video they were cutting (in one scene) at 700mm/min or <12mm/s which definitely isn't bumping any movement speed limits. As far as I can tell, the Lasersaur design has no motorized focusing - presumably on the assumption that its 100W tube would cut straight through anything people would likely put in there. For cooling, I've been wondering if one could use a radiator built for liquid cooling PCs. I've been hoping to avoid having any external cooling hardware.
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Sep 17, 2015 03:42
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Is anyone here familiar with Full Spectrum Laser? They produce machines similar in design to Chinese laser cutters except made in America, though only slightly more expensive than the not-complete-poo poo Chinese machines. I've also just noticed the Glowforge, which boasts a number of features which could make hobbyist-level lasers much more fun (like being able to automatically adapt to a workpiece that's not perfectly flat, or hagin the laser trace a lihand-drawn line on the material). Aurium posted:I know this was posted a while ago, but I figured I'd chime in on this. I'd be difficult. A 40 watt cutter is down on power by about 2 orders of magnitude against a typical SLS metal printer. There's been a number of projects to create a desktop SLS printer for plastic, though there's no evidence that anyone will have a complete design any time soon. Plus one would still need a reasonably convenient source for plastic powder.
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Sep 26, 2015 01:27
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ReelBigLizard posted:I don't think the defensive driving analogy holds up. It's more like not wanting to take a rally driving course because you only intend to drive around town and commute to work. Or, to use something other than a car analogy, an iPad versus a Windows desktop. The iPad will be easier to use for someone who can't be bothered to develop any real technological literacy - provided they're not trying to do anything even slightly outside of how the machine's designers envisioned it would be used. Though at least there's some possibility that the Glowforge software would allow for manual speed and power control like other laser cutters.
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Oct 24, 2015 02:02
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Mister Sinewave posted:I love the (apparently-working) concept of camera for alignment/preview and possibly also focus. Yeah, that was what got me interested in it. Automatically aligning an engraving job with the workpiece sounds like a great thing to have when you're engraving something expensive. And now that they're releasing their firmware as open source, I've been wondering: How hard would it be to implement those features in a homebuilt machine? quote:Cooling is the other thing; not sure what the Glowforge does for that. I'd still like one. They're using a water cooling system, but it's fully self-contained: http://community.glowforge.com/t/cooling-question/198
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Oct 26, 2015 22:50
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I noticed Chinese laser diodes are getting more powerful: https://www.banggood.com/445-450nm-...EgaAoTHEALw_wcB That had me wondering: How much power would it take to penetrate 1/4" acrylic while leaving reasonably clean edges? What it one were to take multiple passes with a motorized Z axis?
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Nov 12, 2017 23:32
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DocCynical posted:Cloud based software? Fuuuuuck that. I understand that when they first announced the cloud thing, people were all like "But what if the company goes out of business?", and in response the Glowforge people offered to release firmware which would let the laser work without their servers. Which they did - except that it was just basic laser cutter firmware, with nothing to enable the features which make the Glowforge what it is. ante posted:Everything I've seen about them seems like overpriced hardware with the "easy software" marketing that may indeed make it easier for beginners starting out, but will ultimately limit you and over process your poo poo when you know exactly what you want. Doesn't the Glowforge gives you the option of driving it like a standard laser cutter, taking control of all the parameters and stuff? I thought someone earlier in the thread said that it did.
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Apr 1, 2018 00:25
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The March Hare posted:Hi thread, does a laser cutter exist that can go through thin paper (under 1mm) without burning it (or maybe more precisely without leaving a burnt edge) for under $1,000? Don't need a bed bigger than A4. I've seen a bunch of Chinese machines for well under $1000 which theoretically would do what you want, but they typically have no safety enclosure and barely functional software. You say you don't want charred edges - have you considered a vinyl cutter? https://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-S...ds=vinyl+cutter
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May 20, 2018 03:55
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