This is just in the planning stages in that the parts (hopefully all of them!) Are ordered.
I have a 1200*900 Chinese laser from about 8-9 years ago but it's never been great for accuracy. I have modified the lens assembly to be easier to adjust to the beam rather than needed to adjust the beam, but I covet a better system like a Kern laser had, or even the Chinese 4*8 machines but don't want that large.
So, I'm going to build one myself. I'll get a bit more cutting area in the process too. The plan is to use a sort of beefed up Acro system from openbuild parts and run mount the laser on the gantry. That should allow the alignment of the Y to basically be permanently set and less beam travel overall and thus less power loss from one corner to the other.
This is primarily for cutting although I hope engraving is possible, no reason it shouldn't be. I'll be taking the openbuilds belt drive and modifying it to run the belt flipped over a little like the belt and pinion style, for the gantry. The Y will be dual drive with actual belt and pinion kit from openbuild stuff.
The main thing I am losing is the up and down of the table but I could always make new gantry sides if I need to move the assembly higher.
I hope it will be better than the Chinese machine but it's unlikely to be worse. I'm not a 3D cad guy so I'll just be posting some photos along the way.
Old machine and a CNC will make parts for the build until the laser tube itself is ready to be transplanted.
So, some of the parts have been coming in. Motors, drivers, enough to remind me I needed encoder cables and didn't buy any so I did that.
I did want to test a easy way to slave two drives together.
On a past CNC retrofit, I did the standard y and a slaved in software....had some issues with the BOB, but basically it worked in the end.
Then I saw some guys running 2 motors from 1 driver.....in reverse. That would not work on a closed loop driver but neat.
However, I just need to run two motors opposite each other as 1 axis as I'm using a DSP controller for this, a ruida. I wanted to see if daisy chaining the pulse signal and daisy chaining the dir signal (to dir + on one driver and dir - on another) would work.
It does.
Mechanical parts coming next week so maybe getting serious in a few weeks.
New build: openbuild / Chinese frakenlaser
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