- Messages
- 20,169
- Location
- Springfield, Missouri
So helping Brent out with his new little toy got me to thinking "That would be fun". I almost ordered one of the same engravers, but revisited a place that I had looked at once before that sells a laser kit for adding onto the Shapeoko and other cnc's.
http://jtechphotonics.com/?product=1-7w-445nm-laser-diode-and-2-0-amp-adjustable-driver-kit
Well, it arrived yesterday and I had about an hour to play with it last night before heading to the house for bed. I was able to get it all connected and found I couldn't get it to turn on! : So, ran some checks on the power supply and it worked. There were LED's on the board that weren't lighting up, I was starting to get concerned that I had a bad board. Well, after some reading of the manual (last resort), I found this thing has 3 safeties on it. The main one that was giving me fits was that when the board loses power it must be reset to work again. Basically it's a latch relay that opens the power circuit to the board when power is lost to keep the laser from continuing to burn and start a fire, so this is a good thing. The other two safeties are the power switch and the key switch, which must be both on for the laser to operate.
So after a few more minutes, I had it burning some cardboard, which I'm surprised at how fast it started smoking, almost instantly.
Hopefully this weekend I'll be attaching the laser to a new mounting plate, which I can swap with the router mounting plate, I also have a mounting plate for my dremal...so just another attachment.
This laser has the TTL control connection, which allows the gcode to turn off/on the laser as needed as well as supports PMW settings for setting the intensity of the laser on the fly, so can gray scale photos onto wood/materials. Since it 's a little larger laser (2 watts), I should be able to cut out thin materials, probably with multiple passes.
http://jtechphotonics.com/?product=1-7w-445nm-laser-diode-and-2-0-amp-adjustable-driver-kit
Well, it arrived yesterday and I had about an hour to play with it last night before heading to the house for bed. I was able to get it all connected and found I couldn't get it to turn on! : So, ran some checks on the power supply and it worked. There were LED's on the board that weren't lighting up, I was starting to get concerned that I had a bad board. Well, after some reading of the manual (last resort), I found this thing has 3 safeties on it. The main one that was giving me fits was that when the board loses power it must be reset to work again. Basically it's a latch relay that opens the power circuit to the board when power is lost to keep the laser from continuing to burn and start a fire, so this is a good thing. The other two safeties are the power switch and the key switch, which must be both on for the laser to operate.
So after a few more minutes, I had it burning some cardboard, which I'm surprised at how fast it started smoking, almost instantly.
Hopefully this weekend I'll be attaching the laser to a new mounting plate, which I can swap with the router mounting plate, I also have a mounting plate for my dremal...so just another attachment.
This laser has the TTL control connection, which allows the gcode to turn off/on the laser as needed as well as supports PMW settings for setting the intensity of the laser on the fly, so can gray scale photos onto wood/materials. Since it 's a little larger laser (2 watts), I should be able to cut out thin materials, probably with multiple passes.