The Laser Cutter Thread

Aurich said:

I have an OmTech 50 watt, 600x400mm cutting area.

It's mostly stock with a few upgrades.

First, and most importantly imo, I chucked the POS fishtank pump they want you to stick in a bucket to cool the laser. F that. I have a proper chiller to recirculate things, tied into an alarm to not let the laser run if it's not active. It works too because I did forget once to turn it on.

Second I removed the also POS stock exhaust fan, which is utterly useless, and put in an inline fan meant for grow houses. Cannabis industry is great for pushing high quality fans out, they're relatively quiet, remote for different speeds, way better than the old "bouncy house" blowers people used to use.

The exhaust port was the wrong size for standard ducting, because of course it was, 3D printed up an adapter:

View attachment 48457View attachment 48456View attachment 48455

I vent outside through a custom panel in my garage.

Third upgrade was to drill out the front panel and install an analog ammeter. Helps to keep an eye on the power when pushing things. I don't like to use more than 80% at most, overdriving your tube a good way to shorten its life.

Otherwise it works great. I really should level the bed at some point, it's clearly not even. On my to-do list, but it's mostly not an issue.

I use Lightburn to drive it over wifi to a wireless bridge run by a Raspberry Pi 3. Harder to buy those than the laser these days.

It's a fantastic tool. I use it a ton, definitely a go to for me now.

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just from that back picture, it looks like the same model I got off ebay back in 2016 (which also claimed to be 50w, but its more likely 40w from the length of the tube). did yours come with a safety cutout switch to not fire the laser if the lid is open? if not, its easy to add one & toggle the setting on the ruida controller.

assuming it is the same model, this playlist from SarbarMultimedia on youtube is great.

Thanks @Jehos, I was debating starting the topic myself, but I wasn't sure where to go with it.

I've got a 60W CO2 laser sold by Automation Technologies, with about a 17*21" work area. It's designed for up to an 80W tube, but we honestly haven't been bothered, and prefer the better low end control.
As far as safety features, it's got almost all of them. It came with almost OK safety goggles, but those were dumped for a pair from an actual reputable brand. There's a doubled up door interlock that's magnetic, flow and relay interlocks for the chiller. The glass over the cutting area is actually IR blocking, and the coaxial low power laser makes checking beam path and scattering easy.

Plus, autofocus and ~8" of Z depth.

Ventilation is provided by a 1/2HP blower through 6" rigid ducting, while a 1/4HP air compressor takes care of the assist gas at~20PSI continuous. I have plans for rigging in feeds from shop air as well as welding bottles later, but those aren't terribly important for what I do with it.

My use cases for it are primarily wargaming terrain and similar, as well as the occasional cutting template, temporary jigs for another machine or industrial use. So I stock a lot of Baltic Birch plywood in 1/8 and 1/4 thicknesses, plus 3-7 colors of 1/4 acrylic for it. Anything thicker tends to either be a saw cut or CNCed.

I also am the go-to tech/repair guy for a larger laser, about 36" square with an 80-100W chassis from Boss in Florida. Again, primarily used for wargaming stuff, considering that it's owned by Adepticon.
I've worked with a 250W laser from Boss as well, designed to handle material up to 1.5" or sheetmetal with a multi-gas assist gas system and inductive distance sensing for flying focal corrections to handle the sheet metal warping. That's at my local community college, and I helped with some of the setup and commissioning, but since I'm no longer a student or lab tech, I don't have a ton of involvement with it anymore.

So if you need access to a laser, I may be able to either make a part or set you up with someone else who can. For repair work, consulting, or troubleshooting, drop me a PM (Do note that I'm in the Midwest though, so it may be remote or parts exchange, and while I am a professional in the industrial machinery field, this is strictly a community support thing, not something I'm intending to do for pay)

Oranging for fun and burning (only of what you want to burn)!

I have a 10W Xtool D1 diode laser. For what I consider to be an entry into lasering, it's done what I've needed it to, even with its limitations. I'm looking at the Omtech Polar for my next unit.

speaking of software, I originally used RDWorks with my chinese bluebox laser, but was one of the early users for Lightburn, and i can't recommend them enough for the quality of their software (at least compared to RDWorks) and the one time I had an issue with importing SVG files (circles weren't circles), they had a fixed version available less than 24 hours after I reported the bug to them.

I have a glowforge. Its a good one for people with no tech aptitude, but I think I could have gone with a more serious laser. I'm not in love with the fact that it doesn't work if the internet goes out, and the wifi can be a little flakey sometimes too (no direct ethernet option).

While I still intend to add a larger capacity unit to the shop at some point I’m probably going to wade into the desktop laser market first. I’ve been eyeballing these systems since 2008, and the economy of scale on the laser cutting chassis is somewhat of an inverse proportion to the cutting capacity, which even American-labeled Chinese units such as Boss Laser haven’t been able to circumnavigate peobably due to volumetric shipping hassles. They are simply extremely expensive tools once their cut bed capacity surpasses 20 or so inches, or say a half meter as a starting max for rule of thumb.

The safety stuff mentioned in the OP is good to keep in mind. Since I’ve always outsourced my laser cutting I have not had to deal with the exposure hazards, while my skill with making files for various cutting software has gotten fairly good since this is essentially an export of a 2D graphic design file for conversational purposes, with different colors dictating tool path speed and/or diode output. There will be learning involved here regardless of which laser you land on.

Question after the ramble for the more experienced:

One of my bucket list sabbaticals involves building “hollow molded” composite wings sans molds. This comes back to making accurate ribs and various formers to build up composite skins and check profiles of completed modules, jig and other tool creation, and in general to keep construction tolerances to as insanely tight settings as possible. This in part comes around to trying to build a form for low Reynolds numbers aerodynamics, where even a few thousandths change of a profile at the trailing or leading edge of the wing can result in large deviations from your desired wing performance parameters. Hollow molding has largely solved these problems at the expense of …incurred expenses.

This brings me to the question of whether or not anybody has messed around with cutting ultralight wing ribs from a homemade composite sandwich yet. Has anybody here tried cutting a profile from a layup such as: bottom skin 3K tow or (5.7 oz/SF) carbon fiber with an .065” balsa core, and opposite face composite of the same 3K carbon skin? Matrix in question would be real epoxy, so say West or your typical 5:1 nasty strong marine or aerospace epoxy systems (this touches on Xenocrates fumes comments—very toxic stuff to burn) and balsa is also a horrible smell to have lingering, despite being a very common softwood for rapid parts production in model aircraft and much larger applications. If anybody would like to try this I could share a small sample of the material and a cut file or two to trial. If you don’t have a good fume extraction let’s not try.

Sufficiently oranged here

What do the MSDS' say about the various materials involved? Particularly what happens when they burn?

I know of some folks who have done carbon layup cutting with a CNC router, and it's not too terrible. A lot of folks apparently like to use waterjets for them (haven't got one of those yet, but have thought about it). Raw, unbonded carbon fiber apparently is best laser cut with a hybrid fiber/CO2 laser, which is definitely out of my price range.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924013611001476 is a paper I'm interested in (but not 32$ worth) That appears to handle the primary question of if Phenolic resins (primary component of West 105) are safe to laser cut. I'm not terribly concerned about the formaldehyde personally (it's a normal part of a lot of plywood glues that I'm experienced with), but I know very little about the safety of laser cutting phenolics. Also, the cut power and speed of 3KW @ 3.5M/m (for a 14mm phenolic sheet) seems to suggest that the resins are not going to cut well at the power levels available to us, considering that 14mm plywood can definitely be cut with a 300W CO2 source with reasonable speed.

Another hobby laser cutter user here. I‘ve got one of the little Ortur diode lasers that I use for cutting cotton fabric (my wife is a quilter) and a hot rodded K40. Ammeter, smoothieboard controller, burly extraction fan vented to outside, air assist, etc. No safety switch on the lid, I rely on an educated user (me) to protect myself there but I’m tempted to add one now.
I find it more useful more of the time than my printer. It doesn’t run constantly- it’s a tool, not a hobby in itself - but combined with a stash of acrylic and plywood it’s really good at prototyping.

Thanks for the thoughts on the carbon cutting. It takes a large amount of power to pull off cleanly, and the West can outgas chlorine so again about that fume extraction, plus some caustics for good measure over the formaldehyde.

Everybody I know who makes their own carbon parts does mill it. These are like that dragon plate link solid carbon products and not a composite sandwich which I still cannot find definitive answers on beyond needing a decent CO2 laser to cut without making a melted mess of resin matrix.

A water jet would be truly awesome to have access to. I would cut all the things with one. Maybe not a composite sandwich though. That should stay dry.

Carhole said:

Thanks for the thoughts on the carbon cutting. It takes a large amount of power to pull off cleanly, and the West can outgas chlorine so again about that fume extraction, plus some caustics for good measure over the formaldehyde.

Everybody I know who makes their own carbon parts does mill it. These are like that dragon plate link solid carbon products and not a composite sandwich which I still cannot find definitive answers on beyond needing a decent CO2 laser to cut without making a melted mess of resin matrix.

A water jet would be truly awesome to have access to. I would cut all the things with one. Maybe not a composite sandwich though. That should stay dry.

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if it outgasses chlorine, the temperatures from the laser cutting will make that combine with the ambient moisture in the air into gaseous hydrochloric acid, which will melt both your lungs and the metal bits of the laser cutter (even with fume extraction).

Pretty much yes. It’s not the right tool for the job.

I suppose we’re venturing outside of a typical home makerspace to get a hybrid laser system with this capacity but it’s an intriguing solution proposed by none other than Universal Laser Systems to run two separate wavelengths when cutting carbon fiber composites.

Curiously, the sample fabric that they show is exactly the material I’d like to cut (3K 2x2 twill) but they don’t go into much detail about how critical the focal length is, so I’m guessing a) that it is critical to get a clean cut without burning resin as we all agree is a nasty byproduct hazard, and b) higher energy density needs exist to cut the carbon. A bonding matrix of balsa or Rohacell by comparison would be a single pass before hitting the lower skin of the composite material, so some experimenting seems needed to program an optimal tool path that wouldn’t char the hell out of the core while still slicing each outer skin with minimal melt. After all, the dimensional accuracy of the product is the whole point in evaluating this tooling.

I feel like getting a K40 just to try since I’ve already got carbon filtration in-line ducting and PPE to scrub and then vent any burn out of the shop. I’m not at all concerned about damaging a machine from momentary contact with gaseous exhaust. That’s what air nozzles and good CFM are for, plus your lenses need cleaning anyways


Edit: note in the white paper that even the hybrid laser cut through 1/16” thick carbon plate looks to produce some resin melt around the fiber cut. Not ideal.

Aurich said:

It has the added benefit of being so damn fast compared to 3D printing. If I can accomplish the same basic thing with both tools I'm always reaching for the laser to just get it done quickly.

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No question, it's so much quicker. It's really interesting to have multiple options and evaluate what would be the best for a given project. Some people want to print everything, but sometimes it's better cut with a laser or even fabricated by hand. I've always felt "one project, multiple ways" is an interesting experiment.

Silicone insulated wires are one of the most underrated QoL improvements for basic electronics projects in a long time.

That was a very sobering OP!

Will follow, I love the idea of using one (for what, I know not... but they seem cool).

Wheels Of Confusion said:

Silicone insulated wires are one of the most underrated QoL improvements for basic electronics projects in a long time.

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Is fine strand a relatively new addition as well? We’ve used heavier gauge fine strand in radio control and robotics for decades and it has historically been stupid expensive, but between the ability to flex and resist high heat from adjacent components it is great stuff to use for mains, if a) it’s even made in the gauge that you need and b) can be afforded. I remember paying dollars for inches of 13Ga and 10Ga drag racing wire back in the day, but now it can be produced much more readily at heavy and lighter gauges for my needs so I stock up and buy by the meter. I’ve seen smaller wire work done in silicone (prefabbed ESC leads for example) but haven’t tried this below 18ga yet. I’m intrigued since it adds those heat and flexibility perks. Also perhaps more tangential is the wonderful assortment of new high amp connectors that have been adopted by the maker and RC industries. Lots of cool options to combine your favorite wires from circuit A to branch B in near lossless reliably tight fittings. Maybe that’s a handy parts thread that we can spinoff for various use cases and their recommendations.

/wantsalaser

also related the fume extraction discussion, after you're done cutting/engraving something, don't immediately pop the lid to check on it, let the fume extraction run for another 60-300 seconds to make sure you've removed as much of the fumes as possible.

So Q:... suspect I know the answer here, but bear with me.

For something like the 10w Creality kit (adapts an Ender 3 for laser)... assuming sticking to wood for now, vent vs filter?
I currently have the printer on my workbench in my basement, which is almost directly under a reasonably sized (400 cfm) ceiling mounted air filtration system that I run when doing woodworking. I'm not doing anything (currently) with plastic or anything other than wood. "Good enough" with the filter? Nearest window is on the opposite side of the floor, so realistically I'd probably need to rearrange most of my basement to get there, unless I run 30+ feet of conduit across the room.

Thanks. I just set the burner up last night, and did a couple of small test runs, and honestly? Yeah... realized I'd vastly underestimated the amount of smoke. Just trying to mentally debate between rigging a hood + conduit up RIGHT to the filtration system, vs. re-arranging the entire area (back wall is the exercise area, front is built-in workbench, all the tools, etc.,, with the HVAC stack in the middle. I'll take a look and see if there's enough clearance that I might be able to run conduit between the joists to the back wall with an inline fan, but otherwise sounds like I probably need to consider moving things around, or just using it outside. (I DID buy a 3d printer enclosure, but still going to need to vent the enclosure somewhere)

Appreciate that! I don't expect the burner to get used all that frequently (it was a Prime day impulse buy, mostly because I'd just picked up an Ender 3 Pro with a fried motherboard for parts)... but I'll take a hard look at running conduit between the joists. That section of the basement doesn't have the ceiling finished, so it wouldn't be TOO hard, I just have low clearance in a few areas that I'd have to figure out - have to cross over some of the HVAC ductwork to get to the window.

It would be a MUCH larger project, more than I probably have the bandwidth for, but moving the entire workbench setup to the back of the basement, and moving the "exercise room" stuff to the front might actually encourage the rest of the family to USE some of that "exercise" stuff....

finally "finished" the V1 of the fume extractor for the laser in the new house's garage (a large exhaust fan creating negative pressure thru a large activated carbon canister filter), first test will be just burning some incense sticks, confirming no smell leaking, then turning off the fan & checking the seals/joints for any lingering smell (all this with the exhaust extension removed that would normally dump everything outside)

Longer-term plan is to re-arrange my space and move my workbench to the back corner, where I can run an exhaust out the window, but for right now I've gone with a similar approach. Using the approach described by https://embracemaking.com/collections/fume-extraction - got the fume extraction "kit" for my Falcon2, which has nozzles down each side of the laser module, connected to a shop vac. Shop vac has a HEPA filter, along with extra layer of filtering (carbon activated pad wrapped around the filter). For anything that escapes the nozzles, I upgraded the filters in my dust filter (which hangs from the ceiling over the workbench) with dual HEPA filters.

Once I move things, the shop vac exhaust will be routed out the window, but for now it seems to be working quite well. (almost TOO well... cutting a bit of felt, it actually sucked the felt up off the table... I had to trim the nozzles a few mm further up to fix) I've only been really used it for one project, burning text and some simple designs into oak for a project, but it reduced smoke in the room by about 80% if I had to try to quantify it. Noisy, absolutely, but went from wife complaining about the smell upstairs to a faint smell IN the same room and no smell on the other side of the door while running.

Youtube fed me a video the other day of some Mountain Folk cutting varous things with a 40W diode laser. It was impressively capable and sliced through 3/4" oak (with air assist) in a single but slow pass, still not overly charred cut line and rather impressively narrow kerf. No safety housing on teh machine which was a 'fuck no don't turn it on moment' during the video but they at least had some glasses on. I'm still laserless here. It hurts my brain every day that I cannot budget to import one yet, but I'll keep watching the thread and thinking about cutting the kits that I designed all the way back in 2008 just waiting for some beam time.

Does Ars have a favorite machine yet for the entry level, mid-level, and god-level users and use cases for current recommendations? I fear that I'm going to need to place some dollars towards an X1Carbon before getting a laser but will keep eyeballs focused.

Nice work, @Aurich that display and video demo both have some serious TLC invested. Lord help you should you ever get stung by the model railroad hobby with full mechanization as prerequistes for your layouts

Umph, yeah, if I'm investing in a laser cutter, gotta cut acrylic and the like as well.