I'll let ya'll know how it goes.  Delivery between August 5th and 10th.



Not my first rodeo with lasers.   First rodeo with chinese lasers, tho.   I've done my homework and am prepared to check for and address certain deficiencies.

I ordered one of the Orion Motor Tech 60 watt laser cabinets.  28"x20" plus a little rim type rotary attachment.

When the tube dies, I'll consider replacing the power supply and getting a stronger tube for it.  

But I've gotten by pretty well the past few years with a 30 watt tube on my Epilog.   It needs to be refurbished.  I've had to dial up the power settings alot the past year or so to get the same results.  Which usually means the tube is losing its co2 charge.   Still, not bad for a 20 year tube with who knows how many hours on it.

Tag for pics when it arrives

So what cool stuff can you do with a powerful laser?

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Engrave wood.  I make lots of plaques.   For events and for wall art.  I've made some pretty nice gun tech diagram art with my Epilog.

Engrave glass.   I do lots of engraved whiskey glasses for one customer.

Engrave rubber stamps.  Made a few of those on my 30 watt, but I had to set the power to max and slow it waaaay down to get good depth.

Photo engraving wood.   Or photo engraving anodized aluminum.   Those can turn out really nice.   Took some of the event group photos from a cola warrior event one year and engraved those onto anodized aluminum and screwed them down to a nice board for a thank you plaque to Geissele one year.  

I've done some reproduction military vehicle data plates.  Product/maker plates for a local machine shop.

The Synrad tube in my Epilog is dying.   It's 20 years old.  It needs a recharge/refurb.   That would cost 1500 to 2000 by itself.   And the rest of the machine has some problems.   Plus, its 20 years old, so I don't know if I want to put any more money into it right now.

An inexpensive DC-excited glass tube chinese laser makes sense right now.

Post some pics of your work!

Awesome, I had no idea what the commercial applications were.

Sounds like a cool piece of kit

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That's super cool!

I'm a straight novice (if you can't tell) so sorry if this is a dumb question, but is that done by hand or is there like a laser engraving CNC machine?

Go away, Andy!

I don't need one of these.

But, now that you mention it, I kinda feel like I can't live without it.

No, stay strong Popov. The wife is fed up with your expensive hobbies as it is.

Honestly though, that artwork looks fantastic. If I didn't draw like a retard, I'd look into a similar setup.

Not to sound like a smart ass, You've never heard of laser engraving?

Laser engraving CNC machine.  Big cabinet style.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/254827813555?_trkparms=aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D233610%26meid%3D4eb1b942a69545509ee0f5d6ea897d38%26pid%3D101195%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D254993524803%26itm%3D254827813555%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D0%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DSimplAMLv9PairwiseWithPLXWeb&_trksid=p2047675.c101195.m1851&amdata=cksum%3A2548278135554eb1b942a69545509ee0f5d6ea897d38%7Cenc%3AAQAGAAACALoxHQN9IN8fI4uJzzPEO9YIZjNMJ61pDu0Gf0tyyXxkAyIIS2q%252F7n2nypWAFXgJ90WgIGULCdi%252FeJugF494XbZdqR6edr5DiJXbjq55MSca%252FgOHsMsEi62HhpmgEyBO6fxajJbL80yaLUYltA1SyVixp7sbez%252Bb63DxXRP%252BbJo451dkNTOvxBZ5HlA29V9jCxw75EoQD9L7ufXfTTjdbmLq07uyzJ%252FtcT87YUSs57sVLf0r6u2Z4Zj%252B2kHPDWwJq4J5AXOnVnRXo08OeuauoQWyz3jOrGZ16Q2cB9JZ8AkLP%252Bj7K0%252B%252B0unMInoNnOOLKTbvSo0aA%252BxDOh%252FrlSvrNUH31SWBoJnbFSANpofTZz6gd0PyeJ1DffQXCZwAazCofwXl7s0fOEzp8Qg0Il6SYudG9xKefRKuE6U1SSM3z%252B8tocgLma%252BEEVRKuRRVkvDXuaP9q5Qv8JVuPsT7ia9DJg3GEJyxE7dFEWaJzsLDBqNZqJJuyM3CoQ9MA3qik5gfCWwJXLLkqqZ3sb1Y3kgmEnBdNna%252F0q1%252BqW6XUVdwnxCZIsfEi5zrILjA35vbLVzJVKNlZdvUxAWFAlTqG4SG0%252BD2vT9jVGfDjoOrH7A%252BkEBWGCCzUHIv%252FeI0WnN5OPkCIfrOW6FZgjjdGXOWyoonNf2b1jMP01X3%252FcvDBt7By5HW%7Campid%3APL_CLK%7Cclp%3A2047675

Honestly I didn't put the two together lol

I see a big laser on Ebay and I start thinking popping balloons

Guess I just never connected the fact that lasers are at the point where a hobbyist could create some cool shit.

My Epilog was made circa 2001.   But that was a $28,000 machine when it was new.  I bought it at a government auction a few years ago for 1300 bucks.

Chinese imports have brought costs down to where the average hobbyist can afford one without having to take out a car payment.

I can't really draw, either.

If you can draw, that's a huge plus.  BUT... if you can use gimp or photoshop, you can do alot.  

Between gimp and inkscape, I took a photograph, cut out the background, did some other editing in gimp to make it stand out, then made a vector out of it in inskcape.   Filled vectors with "hatches" in rhinocad to make solid shades to be fill engraved (back and forth raster) and then selectively chose which lines to vector engrave to make it pop on the wood.

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That is really cool!

I have a Dremal LC40. Not a bad little machine, but the UI is a little too dumbed down for my liking.

Been wanting to show it off a bit, but only done about 3-4 projects on it since I got it. Most of those have been pet plaques but I know I could do so much more with it.

Hobby = go Chinese
Business = Epilogue

I have a K40 that I got for free and had fun with it for about a month before the tube went south.  I got a new tube installed and going through the focusing.

A good friend of mine is in business.  The two epilogue lasers paid for themselves in a very short time.  Lasers cannot be down or it costs $$ a day.

On photo engraving like that, go into your photo editing software first and adjust the brightness and contrast to make it alot brighter.  It should look too bright on your computer screen.

Then use "unsharp mask" or "sharpen" to make the fine details pop.  Again, it will look pretty terrible on your computer screen.

I'm not familiar with the dremel product.  I didn't even know they made a laser engraver.  

Those look really nice.  The one on the left is pretty close.   Between the photo editing tips and getting the power dialed in just right, you should be able to nail it.
I've noticed that for photo engraving, just a few percentage points of power setting either way make a huge difference.

I will say Lightburn is amazing to work with.  Get it to work with the Ruida controller on the laser you got.

I had a small diode laser I played around with and Lightburn made things VERY easy.

Try turning the wood's grain so you're engraving across the grain, not with it.

Those are beautiful.

The K40s are kinda garbage.  Or at least, require alot of fiddling with.   On your K40, I'd stick with whatever size Reci tube you can fit in it.  

5 years ago, I would have agreed with you about all chinese lasers.   But you can literally buy 4 of the machines I linked to for an equivalent size/power epilog.  And trotecs are even more expensive.

Now, the Epilog will have some features that those chinese machines don't.   The Epilog will have an RF-excited metal tube that can fire alot quicker.   Meaning you can engrave alot faster (like 3 or 4 times faster.)   Which is why my Epilog has servos and all of these Chinese DC-excited glass tube machines use stepper motors.   They could use servos, but it would be a waste of money.

US-made all metal tubes do last alot longer, too.    But they're ALOT more expensive.    My Epilog tube (actually made by Synrad) is finally losing enough power to need a recharge.  After 20 years.   I bought it in a government auctions maybe 7 years ago and have used it alot since then.   No telling how many actual hours on it total but I would bet it's easily over 20,000 hours.   Even the best chinese glass tubes are only advertised as a maximum of 10,000 hour tubes and like all things Chinese, I take that figure with a grain of salt.   However, the Reci brand glass tubes do have a pretty good reputation for longevity.

Epilog also uses some proprietary drivers to make 3d engraving to do things like those 1911 grips alot more easily.  I can't comment on 3d laser engraving too much as I've never had a machine advertised as capable of it.   I've heard mixed reports on how well it works.  

I won't be throwing my Epilog away.  I will be getting it refurbished at some point.  Chinese laser will become redundancy and increased throughput.

The downside to my older Epilog is that its old enough that the motherboard is no longer made.  If that goes, I will have to "rebuild" the machine and use a Ruida controller or something.   That's going to be interesting trying to figure out all the PWM and "pre-fire" settings for it to drive the Synrad tube properly.  The Ruida controllers advertise the capability but you rarely see someone try, since the glass tubes are so cheap anyways.

Yeah, I'm going to buy a lightburn license.   It looks pretty slick.

I will miss being able to print directly from Rhino like I could with the epilog print drivers but the Lightburn stuff does look pretty intuitive and easy to use.

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Few more examples.

The cribbage board, I just engraved the shading and lines and used the laser to lay out the holes so I could drill them on a drill press.

Impressive , thanks!

That's pretty neat.

How fast is the process? (I realize that's pretty open ended question)

Already knew that, and did that plus for that horse. Actually took that one up for the challenge. The horse is a very dark brown, almost black, very little contrast for detail. Had to go thru by hand and draw back on some of the features to make them show up at all.

It is just a rebranded Full Spectrum Muse. Ex worked at a sign shop ran by a company that makes laser/engravable materials, so learned a most of the tricks of the trade before she ran off. Was their test/Demo unit and at under 100h cut time and only $1k for the full pro bundle with Bofa, which was about $8-9k new, was hard to pass up.

Should add the one on the right was the test, the one of the left was the one I was planning to give them. Then they decided they wanted both of them because they though the blue one looked like a shadow shadow print.

Yeah, it varies alot.

Doing things in batches helps, because in raster mode (most of the time) it engraves line by line in horizontal lines.  Back and forth.  So doing two at once in a row is much faster than doing two in a column.

To do a single 6.5" tall by 5" wide plaque, at 600 dpi, the raster portion takes maybe 12 minutes?  Adding another in the row would add maybe 2 minutes overall.

Then add in vector engraving time, where it traces back over certain lines you've designated.   The more lines to trace, the longer it takes.  So on a 6.5x5 plaque, typically anywhere from another 1-2 minutes for some basic outlines to 10 minutes for a bunch of little complicated lines.

That's for my RF tube Epilog.  DC-excited chinese lasers have a raster speed about 1/3 to 1/4 as fast as RF-tube machine.

Nice deal!  I'd have taken that up in a heartbeat.

Shipped!  Delivery estimated for Thursday!

Can you make enough $ on the side to make it worth the machine/power + your time?

Where do you advertise? Do you ship?

I have heard that if you look directly into the emitter of a Chinese laser while it is on, without goggles, you can see the hammer and sickle for a brief moment.

It pays well enough for me/my time value.   I don't know if I could support a very good standard of living with it all by itself.   I work millwright jobs and do the laser stuff as a side gig.

I don't really advertise.  I do ship.

I'm just looking for a side gig. I sit at a desk all day and extra cash is extra cash....

Wow!  Beautiful grips!  I have 2 1911's and neither of them is nice enough to hang those on.

Came here hoping it was a Fiber Laser, I sure need one of those, but CO2 is still cool and wouldn't mind one someday either!

I have a giant ass yag laser that I picked up at auction.  Needs to be refurbished tho.

Got the chiller and the rotary attachment.   Laser still coming in a bigass crate.

And?

SAIA dropped crate off in my driveway, I rigged it up on my front end loader and put it in the shop and went back to bed.

Kung flu has been kicking my ass.   Cough came back with a vengeance the past week.  

I will have updates soon, tho.

Get well man!

Bump, teaser

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Lasers be like they do on leather

Placeholder.  Uncrated it.  Looks good.  Don't have time to mess with it.  More pics eventually

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Uncrated.  

3rd party chiller next to it.   These glass tubes are water cooled, but the machines only come with a little blue plastic tub to put ice water in for the pump to circulate through the channels in the tube, lol.

So I went ahead and did some research and picked an appropriate small chiller for closed loop cooling.

Minor nitpick and tip for any of yall who buy these.

Check to make sure that all the brains are connected.   Went to do alignment on the mirrors and it kept giving me a "machine protected" error and wouldn't pulse the laser.

Its got a hall effect sensor in the frame at the door, so I traced that back to the control board.  Sure enough, the wires go into a connector that wasn't push-clicked onto the pins on the controller board.  Pushed it on and now it works.  Yay.

Which tells me their QC "checklist" is a bunch of bullshit, but I kinda figured that would be the case anyways.

I did check to make sure the power supply was set to 110V before turning it on the first time.  That one I did think of and it was set correctly.  Probably by luck.

For reference:
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I've had a Redsail M-900 (600x900) laser for several years now.  Have the adjustable Z axis, rotary, etc.  Have never really done much with it.  The CNC plasma has been the "money maker".  With the changes in steel prices and shipping, I'm contemplating swapping over to the laser, and maybe using the plasma table (6' x 12') as a router for a while.  I like the versatility of the laser, and it's not nearly as real estate hungry or generally as dirty as the metal stuff!

There's an "EZ Router" brand cnc gantry machine coming up for auction near me.  4x8 set up for plasma.

Should I fo?  

How do you like your redsail?   How has the tube held up?   I'm curious about DC glass tube longevity.   This is my first chinese laser.

Neat thread.

Design deficiency but an understandable one given how budget these lasers are:

I got the mirrors all aligned (which was tedious having never done it before) then decided I would make the red laser diode point where the tube laser is pointing.   Because the red laser is mounted to a bracket on the nozzle, it is only accurate at a given table height, so I picked the height at which a half inch board is in focus for this lens.  Fine.  Won't be perfect but it will be good enough for most stuff I'll do.

Oops, not so fine.  If you're not careful, the red laser diode now sticks out far enough that it can crash into something at the extents of the gantry's travel.  Which I did.   Red laser diode is dead.  Not a huge deal but kind of annoying.

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I'll be upgrading with this next.
https://www.cloudraylaser.com/collections/beam-combiner-expander/products/cloudray-znse-laser-beam-combiner-set-style-b?variant=7718508265523

Adds in red diode laser at the first mirror so it travels coaxial with the IR laser.   This is such a no brainer, I really don't get why they don't have this standard.

Cool!

I have a cheap k40 that I use mostly for engraving slate coasters and making wooden business cards.

I use an Ortur for burning logos on products.

On advice from arfcom, I invested in Lightburn.

Wow, holy crap.   Why didn't Epilog snatch this guy up?   The utility it adds to one of these chinese lasers is incredible.

Got a camera on order to take advantage of the camera layout functionality.   Basically, lets you lay out batch parts, view the parts in real time and accurately position your graphics in the software directly onto the parts.  

Removes the need to make fixtures for batch jobs.  Which is great, especially when you're working with batches of items that might not be perfectly uniform.