Home Built 40W CNC Laser
Project Overview
Note: This design has been superceded by the 2.x Laser. There is a blog post on it, information on the wiki and a lot of discussion on the forum.
This was designed as a "self replicating" laser cutter engraver'. What this means, is all of the high tolerance complicated parts can be made on a laser cutter. So, once one laser cutter is done, it can help make others. All of the other parts can either be purchased or made with common home tools.
This is not a mamby pamby little diode laser than can slowly cut through a piece of thin black tape. This will cut real materials, quickly. If you want to know what it can cut, go to a Ponoko type site and check out their materials list.
This was designed to be a dirt cheap, but fully capable laser cutter. Many of the material choices were made to satisfy that goal. I am sure many people will know of better materials, but usually at a higher cost. Feel free to substitute them .Almost everything that is not an off the shelf item, can be made with a laser cutter or router. To kick start the first generation of 'self replicating lasers, I have some kits located here.
The buildlog is presented blog style (most recent entry first) if you want to go view it the other way click here... Take me to the beginning of the build
How can you contribute to the project?
- Participate in the forum.
- Suggest changes. A lot of the design comes from your input.
- Link to buildlog.net. More people + more ideas = better laser
- Donate. Help fund the cost of the web site and costs associated with this project.
Buildlog Title: Buildlog.net Open Source Laser
Builder: bdring
Member Since: 2009-11-22
Thursday, August 26th 2010 - 3:44 PM
I get asked all the time if there are detailed build instructions. Right now the answer is basically, no. Some assembly drawings have some build information. Other than the buildlog itself and the forum, that is it. I have about 20 things on my project todo list and time for about 4 of them. Some people have offered to help, but no organized effort has started. I can help, but not do the whole thing.
I was thinking about starting a wiki for this. This way anyone could contribute and it would stay more organized than a build log. Does anyone have any recommendations for good wiki software. I would like it to be free, open source, self hosted and popular enough that it won't go anywhere soon. MediaWiki comes to mind...is that a good choice or overkill?
The wiki could also have some general info sections.
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Sunday, August 29th 2010 - 5:34 PM
I installed a
Gecko G540 in my laser. See my
blog post for a review of the product and install. I wanted a four axis for some experiments with a
tangentail knife cutter and I wanted a smoother driver.
The interface on the G540 is not ideal for controlling the laser enable quickly, so I made a breakout cable. I will be adding to the cable, but this will do for testing. Below is a photo and schematic. click the schematic for a bigger view. the scaling the forum adds makes some lines disappear.
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Thursday, September 9th 2010 - 6:22 PM
I get asked via email about build cost often, so I am adding a post about the topic.
When I started this project I set a goal to be able to build a laser cutter for less than $1000. Was I able to do it? I definately had less than $1000 invested by the time I was able to cut a shape with the laser under CNC control. I was not starting with an empty shelf though. I already had a lot of the cheap stuff like nuts, bolts, wire, terminal blocks. I also cut all my own parts on my router, some of it from scrap material. I used cheap surplus things like stepper motors, etc.
Since that time a lot of feature creap has raised the price. Non essencial things like a gas spring assisted cover, assist air pumps and high end stepper drivers raised the price a lot.
I have the BOM on line with realistic, if not weighted high, prices. It does not contain prices for the electronics or the tube. Each person is going to start with a different amount of parts and a want a different amount of optional items added. If you only have $1000 to spend and don't have some material and cannot make you own parts, I would not start the project. I would suggest $1200 is probably closer. Do the math yourself, before you start the project.
Note: Remember this is open source. Feel free to make things yourself from the drawings. I do not make any real money from selling my kits. Don't feel any obligation to buy from me. If you want to help the project, just donate to it.
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Friday, September 10th 2010 - 2:58 PM
eBay is a good place to start. LightObject.com also sells them. It is good to do some searching because there are always some hidden deals out there.
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Sunday, September 12th 2010 - 10:58 PM
I was messing around with the RepRap motherboard controlling the laser. Now the laser is not firing. I think I lost the common ground between the RepRap and the laser power supply. If I measure ground to ground on the scope, it jitters around between +/- 2-3V. This means the power supply enable pin was seeing in excess of 7-8volts. Something made a bit of a buzzing sound before it stopped working. I cannot fire it using the high or low enable.
Does anyone know the front end of the laser power supply before I tear it out?
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Monday, September 13th 2010 - 9:54 PM
The I.C. near the input is a SN74LS06N, hex inverter buffers/driver. This is socketed, so I will try to install a new one.
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Friday, September 17th 2010 - 2:35 AM
No I purchased power supply from LightObject and tube from love-happy-shopping.
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Friday, September 24th 2010 - 2:54 AM
I finally got a chance to post the drawings for the enhanced Z Lift parts. They are on the
drawings page. I will probably post a kit in the next few days. I have been gluing the parts together with an official acrylic glue,
Weld-On 16. So, I will probably ship them assembled.
Note: This is only recommended for people who want to eventually add a 3D printer or other add on where the Z axis needs to very stable.
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Tuesday, September 28th 2010 - 1:15 AM
I was setting up a fourth stepper for the 3D printer extruder. I was using Mach3 as a test controller. I decided to play with tangential knife control while I was at it.
Tangential knife cutters rotate the knife while cutting, so the blade is always pointing in the direction of travel. They work much better than drag knives, especially on thicker materials like gasket material.
It took me a little while to figure out how to setup the resolution for the A axis (I am not a lathe guy) . You set it up as steps per degree. My setup is 200 steps/rev * 10 microsteps/step / 360 =
5.556 step/degree. You then tell Mach3 to use tangential control and set a few items: Lift Angle and Lift Z. When the knife needs to turn at a corner the z lowers the Lift Z amount. It does this any time the corner angle is less than the Lift Angle, so it does not retract at small angles. I left lift angle at 45 and change. the Lift Z to 0.05
I only simulated this by setting the knife stepper next to the machine with a little paper knife taped on, but it all worked as advertised. The only issue is that Mach3 reverts to exact stop mode in tangential mode. This means that things like ellipses are going to be really slow. If you don't need anything but lines and circles it should work at a decent speed.
I might make a carriage for this and create a video of it in action.
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- tangencial1.jpg (14.22 KiB) Viewed 38433 times
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Friday, October 22nd 2010 - 2:03 AM
I made some tweaks to the X axis based on some things I learned on other projects.
1. I changed the belt clamp to simple screws (no tapping)
2. I changed the idler bracket to use a pocket instead of using an o'ring to hold in the bearing.
3. I changed the wheel tensioner to a square nut. (no tapping)
4. I also removed "non-commercial" from the license. This is to make it more in line with the new open source hardware (
OSHW) direction. The
drawings page has this license as well as the revised drawings. The drawings will update as they are revised.
5. BOM updated per above which affects the kits.
There will be some similar changes to the XY assembly and Z lift.
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Friday, October 22nd 2010 - 3:07 PM
Yes, it will still work the old way too. Just cut through at the full diameter of the bearing.
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Saturday, October 23rd 2010 - 5:29 PM
I did similar updates to the XY Mechanism. I change the belt clamping method and put the bearings in pockets. The bearing cut can still be cut through if you want to fab them on a laser. You tension the belt by moving the back pulley. Tighten the back pulley screws until it can still slide, but it takes a strong push. Now push it back until the belt is tight and fully tighten the screws.
I will update the BOM later today.
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Monday, October 25th 2010 - 1:43 AM
A while back someone suggested using a NEMA 17 as my Z axis motor. This would get all motors to be NEMA 17's. I decided to try it as well incorporate some other ideas. It worked great and it is the current method I use for my axis. I will be releasing the drawings for it soon, and it will be new Z axis kit.
It is a simpler than the old method as it uses a lot less of the "fold back" bearings. The fold back bearings were used to get greater engagement of the belts with the pulleys. It turns out that it was overkill and just using a pulley with more teeth does just as well. It is easier to show this rendering than try to take a picture of it.
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Tuesday, October 26th 2010 - 1:42 AM
The Z Lift has been updated. I ran a first pass to update the BOM. I need to double check it.
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Wednesday, October 27th 2010 - 8:08 PM
I started a shared Google Document for build instructions. For now this seems like an easy way to collaborate on this. I might do a wiki page, etc later, but this is a good start. The link is here. I only spent about a half hour on it so far to layout a simple template for it. If you want access to edit it, please email me. I think you will need a gmail account to do it. Here is the link. I will work on it as time permits.
https://docs.google.com/document/edit?i ... =en&pli=1#add comment in the forum
Thursday, October 28th 2010 - 11:22 PM
I revised the frame, top cover and main assembly drawings. In many places the hardware was not actually installed in the model and estimated or counted on the actual unit. I took the time to put it in the model and updated the BOM as required. The BOM was off on Misumi t-nuts, but pretty close everywhere else. The hardware kits will be revised. I still want to give it one more look.
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Wednesday, November 3rd 2010 - 4:49 PM
I have no way to get history on the BOM. I suggest manually comparing the hardware on the list with the bag labels. Send me a private email if you need anything special.
I still can't guarantee the list is 100% complete. It is my best guess. When I find or hear of missing items I add them. The kit contents page, is here.
http://www.buildlog.net/cnc_laser/erp/hardware_kit.htmladd comment in the forum
Friday, November 12th 2010 - 1:22 PM
I have not figured out a good way to share the 3D files efficiently. They change so often I would spend more time maintaining the on line versions than doing design work. I can probably provide STEP file snapshots of the design via email by special request to active forum members.
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Wednesday, December 1st 2010 - 3:26 PM
I don't use those clamps on the design anymore. With practice, acrylic is easy to tap. Unfortunately, many people had nothing to practice on and broke a part or two. These tiny clamps were especially vulnerable. I switched to this style. The belt is tensioned by moving the idler pulley.
I have attached the clamp drawing in case you want to use it anyway. It is a PDF with a DXF as an attachment.
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Monday, December 20th 2010 - 12:16 PM
I found out the nozzles I had on order probably won't come in until the first week of January. Sorry for the delay for all who have requested them.
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Thanks,
Richard