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Upgrades to FSE 40w

PostPosted: Tue Aug 09, 2011 6:07 am
by TLHarrell
I am working on upgrades to my Full Spectrum Engineering 40 watt Hobby Laser, and figured this would be of some interest here as there are others who have one of these little units.

I've been thinking this one over for a while, and I had requested that hotkeys be added to RetinaEngrave to control functions, which is the only reason I will be able to actually get this to work. FSE is a fantastic company and they added the hotkeys the next day! Talk about customer support!

I ordered up some arcade buttons last night, and a USB gamepad to hack up. I am going to be adding a remote control panel to operate RetinaEngrave remotely from at my laser bench. My computer is about 10' away in another room (my small garage is divided into workshop and home office space) and I find it really annoying running back and forth setting things up. The plan is to soon have a dedicated computer to run the laser from so I can program and operate at the same time, but even with a computer next to the unit you still need to use the mouse and go button hunting. This panel will shortcut all the commonly used commands in one convenient place.

Tonight I cut up a $1 piece of scrap 3/16" smoked acrylic from the bin at Tap Plastics.

IMAG0251 (Large).jpg


The lettering and symbols are heavily rastered into the back of the acrylic, filled with white paint, then the back was sanded to a grainy texture. The pictures don't entirely do it justice. It looks fantastic.

The control panel mounts to the laser body with a couple big hard drive magnets. This is to allow the door over the laser tube to remain operable, yet the panel sits in a reasonably accessible location. I can't wait to get it completed.