Well, I decided to post a few pictures and describe some of the things I'm doing. I know this build's been 'done to death' so I'll do mine on the minimal side. Anyway, I've dimensioned mine slightly larger than the stock 2.X. My outer dimensions are LxWxH, 1150mm, 660mm, 360mm. This will yield an approximate cutting area of about 27"X15".
I have manufactured all the plastic parts from the online DXF's and cut them on my CNC router. The Metal parts I bought from another user here, 'RSM5178'.
All the pulley's, bearings, shaft couplers I bought from 'Inventables', as well as the MAKERSLIDE rails. The slotted aluminum tubing and components I purchased from MISUMI. There are a few other suppliers I bought from over time and I now have 99.9% of everything I need to complete this build.
I intend to use an 80 watt RECI instead of the stock Chinese 40 watt (not that there's anything wrong with that;)) because I want to assure I have all the machine I can afford so there's no regrets later on. I'm an RC Modeler so I'll mostly be using this machine to cut balsa and ply.
Thus far my cash outlay's a little under $2k and this includes the laser tube, power supplies and electronics. I'm not going to use a DSP to start out because I'm not sure how useful it would be for me. I have several CAD packages I use and I have CUT2D and MACH3 which I think will be adequate to do what I want to do.
My 2k includes items that I will use for cooling too. I was lucky enough to find an aquarium chiller on Craigslist and I bought a pump from Harbor Freight.
I've seen others post their outlays for the stock 2.X in the past and most said around $2500 but prices have come down on a lot of the big ticket items.
Given I’m using an 80 watt tube that has a circumference of 80mm I had to redesign the tube brackets. I was careful to keep the center of the new bracket in the same relationship with mirror1 and mirror2, however, because of the fatter tube the tube just barely clears the RH Makerslide so I decided to raise the tube brackets ¼” and subsequently had to do the same for both mirrors and the laser head on the gantry.
One of the photos shows my Combiner Fixture (Lightobject) that I’ve yet to design a mount for. Hopefully this will work out without much BS. It’s pretty close to the left side Y drive shaft.
Bob T.
Some photos in no particular order: