by cvoinescu » Thu Feb 05, 2015 11:46 am
The laser interface board will work for a CNC milling machine too. Note that it's designed to connect to a PC that has a parallel port (an actual port, not a USB-to-parallel adapter). the PC runs LinuxCNC (formerly known as EMC2), although I'm pretty sure Mach3 will work too. If you plan to do raster engraving with your laser, you may want a DSP control board instead, though. You'll find a lot of information on this forum.
There is a huge difference between a 1 W 808 nm diode laser and a 40 W carbon dioxide tube laser (10.6 um). The latter is much, much more powerful, and can cut a wider range of materials. For instance, the laser diode can not cut clear acrylic at any power or speed, whereas the carbon dioxide laser has no trouble with it at all. Also, in the time it takes to burn a line in plywood with the diode, the tube can cut 1/4" plywood. With a 40 W tube, engraving wood (both vector and raster) is usually done at the maximum speed permitted by the X and Y motors.
On the other hand, the laser tube is more expensive than a 1 W diode, and more difficult to use and to set up. There's optics to align and keep clean, the laser tube is made of glass, it needs to be water-cooled, and it has a high-voltage power supply. Still, the diode is a somewhat dangerous toy, whereas the laser tube is a useful tool.