Hey all, not exactly 3D printing but still -
Can anyone recommend a nice laser cutter for a hackerspace ?
Something in the $5k range.
Thanks.
If you’ve got a few people that know what they’re doing you might be able to build one for 5k. You might be able to find a used one in that range if you are very lucky. A reasonable new unit, around 30 watts, starts around 10k
http://fslaser.com/ offers a retrofitted cheap chinese laser cutter for light work for about $2K. They also have a nicer one for $3500 that had a pretty successful kickstarter. They have the larger ones too but those get expensive.
Or you can pick up one of the dozen cheap chinese ones, scrap the electronics and throw a smoothieboard on there or something.
Other laser kits/plans exist though I don’t have a ton of experience with them. The buildlog one has a pretty great user base but sourcing one is as with most self sourced kits ‘challenging’
I really like the epilog cutters, but they start at 8k
I like the idea of a cheap Chinese cutter and replacing the electronics. What wattage should I be looking at ? What is needed for soft materials like wood, and for soft metals ?
Whatever you do, do not buy from full spectrum. (fslaser) They have treated our hackerspace like ass, are extremely unfriendly to giving out any information or replacing faulty boards, etc. (to the point that one of their sales managers REMOVED previously freely available information from their forums that was posted by an engineer) One of their heatsinks got hot enough that the thermal adhesive softened, shorted the driver, less than 6 months after we bought it, and they wanted $300 to replace it. If anything spend the money on an epilog or build something like a smaller lasersaur.
@ThantiK did you guys do your own replacement? I’ve not found anyone who has actually purchased one before so this is good to know.
@Ross_Hendrickson we eventually found info on the driver, reverse engineered it, and redid the smd part without their help. Not only without their help, but they actively hindered us in an attempt to sell us another of the same board. Seriously fuck them. At this point were buying an epilog, ripping the guts out of the fslaser, and likely smoothie boarding it and rebuilding it in tslot.
Yeah, I was going to ask if you were going to smoothie board it. I’m snagging a dev board to hack on some smoothie firmware stuff sooner than I can get a board (cheaper too) but it might end up being a breadboard smoothie for our LS @ Area515 (if I can ever get down there…).
@Theodore_Wahrburg , maybe you could compound on how fucking absolutely terrible @Full_Spectrum_Laser is?
One more recommendation to stay away from Full Spectrum. We have their 40W laser, the machine is OK, but the software is proprietary and buggy. The download link requires a password, which you’re supposed to mail support for - I’m still waiting for a reply a month later (keep in mind that this software is completely useless without the laser cutter itself). After finding the password online, getting a new version, registering it (which requires the serial number of the machine), I find out in a few days that it refuses to work without an internet connection. That’s right, our laser cutter is now crippled and completely dependent on being able to get online and whatever it’s “phoning home” to staying up. The “offline activation” process, which I followed, requires sending them an email, which, you guessed it, went unanswered. Forum postings are pre-moderated, and my post about this, unsurprisingly, never appeared.
Aside from the sheer stupidity of requiring activation / passwords / internet connection for software that’s COMPLETELY USELESS without a $3k machine, I honestly can’t think of another instance of this kind of treatment by a company who got so much of our money.
Speak to Marco at http://lightobject.com he is very knowledgeable and always helpful. If I was building another laser i would by and xy axis, laser and DSP from him and build the rest from eBay parts.
@Shachar_Weis I noticed you mentioned soft metals. I only have experience with a 40W Chinese cutter, but metal is a tricky one. I can do upto 5mm acrylic and 3mm ply reasonably well. No metal though, not even foil tape. Shameless plug: http://www.artaylor.co.uk/laser_conversion.html
@Shachar_Weis we have a unit from these guys http://www.yorklaser.com/ and we are wery happy with it. Its all chinesse hw/sw, not the best in the world, but it works. It is now in its fifth year without any hickoups. Also happy with their support and all.