John T wrote:
Thanks for pics I had no idea how big a laser unit was - I probably can't afford it anyway but it looks pretty compact. Lots of smoke?
John
It's 32 x 20 x 10".
You'd be surprised (I was) at the price, $365 US delivered. The eBay prices vary quite a bit, I ordered it on Friday with free shipping, and on Monday it was an additional $35 to ship. There's a large number of sellers that ship from a US warehouse, but I hear they are mostly the same two Hong Kong based companies. The machine was made by the Liaocheng Shenhui Laser Equipment Co., Ltd., which I read makes most of the K40s.
Wife complained about how smoky the basement was. I really need to get some dryer vent hose, rather buy some more than unseal the formerly leaky window. It's now under a porch and doesn't let any light in.
Art, the software docs are essentially non-existent, can't even find any in Chinese to translate. There's a dpi setting, so maybe they control grayscale that way. It could be interesting to set it to something like 10 dpi (default is 1000, not sure why they have dpi when everything else is in mm) and see if I can see the individual dots.
LaserDRW won't import DXFs, but they also include a copy of CorelDraw 12 (from 2003) with a plugin. I did a quick eccentric gear and it did the top half of the gear; didn't get a big enough piece of scrap cardboard to fit the whole thing. It was very slow doing so, but there were different board numbers configured. With the Moshidraw board/driver it'll do that if the board type is wrong, so I'll be trying it with the same board number as the non-plug in version.
The software includes a run-in test that will run it back and forth over the same axis. I get 310mm X and 210 Y (300x200 was the claim) without hitting the stops. I'm going to lube it with the "dry" bike lube I use on the 3D printer and if that makes any difference. Max speed is 500mm/sec, set it any higher and the software sets it back.
There's a spring loaded clamp for smaller pieces, not quite sure what to do with bigger stuff yet. Lots to experiment with and learn about.
I'll try some squirter juice instead of antifreeze/distilled water. Is the cheap blue stuff is good enough, or do I need to go with the premium RainX premix?
Kirk