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Re: Chooch's 3D printable laser cutter

PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2011 8:00 pm
by thechoochman528
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7191

Just released the old laser cutter 3d models for printing, this includes the x-y-z and tube clamps.

Re: Chooch's 3D printable laser cutter

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:16 am
by thechoochman528
Got a chance to do my first quick gantry rendering today. Some parts were omitted or I simple forgot to select them (the v-wheels)

All the black parts, except for the belts are 3D printable. As you can see the parts count is fairly low compared to the old design, which would have taken ages to print.

Image

More to come as I finalize details.

Some more specifics:

Machine foot print is now 40x25x12"
I also forgot to mention early it has a cantilevered z-axis table that is manually adjustable.

Re: Chooch's 3D printable laser cutter

PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:41 pm
by thechoochman528
5571963479_baeef5331a_z.jpg
Official Image


Did this real quick while I was on lunch today. You can get an idea of what it may look like, I still have a few details to go over and add.

Maybe this should be the new official image?

Re: Chooch's 3D printable laser cutter

PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 11:58 pm
by thechoochman528
My 40 watt laser from love-happyshopping arrived safely yesterday. I was able to pull a few dimensions off of it and model it today.

It's a lot shorter than I read/thought it was...it's 28.25" (718mm) long & ~2" (50.35mm) in diameter.

Note: In the model I made the diameter 56mm to give a little bit of cushion when designing around the fragile tube. The details are approximate or eyeballed, since it's not that important.

Image

Re: Chooch's 3D printable laser cutter

PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:20 pm
by twehr
Care to share your model so the rest of us don't have to reinvent it?

Re: Chooch's 3D printable laser cutter

PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 9:57 pm
by thechoochman528
Sure, PM me your email address and tell me what format you want it in.

I had a heck of a time getting it to fully appear in keyshot, the same happened with a lot of other CAD programs, because it was a revolved object (which a lot of programs don't like). I finally changed it into a mesh object then saved into a different format. So I'll most likely have to give it to you as a mesh, but in the format of your choosing.

Re: Chooch's 3D printable laser cutter

PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 10:14 pm
by bdring
Send me a STEP file. I will post it somewhere

Re: Chooch's 3D printable laser cutter

PostPosted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:00 am
by thechoochman528
I can't, it's a mesh... .Step files don't support mesh exports.

I can do a .3DM, .3DS, .Obj, .Stl which are all mesh files or...

The original file is a .Dwg, I also just tried and was able to convert it to an .FBX file (which i wish i would have done in the first place when rendering)...but I can't open it in rhino to convert to a .Step :(

I haven't used proE in awhile, so i'm not sure, but maybe you can convert one of those into a .Step?

Re: Chooch's 3D printable laser cutter

PostPosted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:32 pm
by twehr
[quote="thechoochman528"]I can't, it's a mesh... .Step files don't support mesh exports.

I can do a .3DM, .3DS, .Obj, .Stl which are all mesh files or...

The original file is a .Dwg, I also just tried and was able to convert it to an .FBX file (which i wish i would have done in the first place when rendering)...but I can't open it in rhino to convert to a .Step :(

I haven't used proE in awhile, so i'm not sure, but maybe you can convert one of those into a .Step?[/quote]

Post the 3DM (Rhino) and I will convert it to STEP.

Re: Chooch's 3D printable laser cutter

PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 3:19 am
by thechoochman528
Image

Things are still extremely slow going, being that I've been busy. Also, still several more hundreds of dollars to sink into this project, but i'm trying to finish some others first.

However, I thought i'd post this. I've had it designed for months now and thought it's not doing any good sitting on my HDD, so I decided to post this to maybe inspire some others trying to create laser aiming and focusing rigs for their cutters.

The concept is simple and actually Bart came up with it...

Two laser pointers that are mounted on the laser carriage that can be adjusted to a known angle. I also added a y-plane adjust, in case the pointers are not exactly inline with the cutting beam.

You first have to burn a point on to the material you want to cut then adjust the two lasers on to the point.

After the initial setup the laser pointers then show where the cutting laser will hit and if the cutting laser is in focus via merged and un-merged pointers.