Hey there,

Lots of things over the past few years. I will list them here and just let me know if you want more details.

Most recently to oldest

*Built a new stand/rolling cart with laptop drawer and monitor mount

*Air hose regulator so I can easily toggle the air for the assist on and off without messing with the compressor valve

*Microcontroller based thermostat that triggers LED lights when water for the coolant gets too hot

*Cohesion 360 board so I can use lightburn and control power intensity from computer

*Secondary power supply to run case upgrades

*Extra case lights

*Intake fans

*Laser crosshairs

*Drag chain for air assist and laser cross hair wires

*analog Ammeter

*analog flow gauge

*Scissor lift

*Honeycomb bed

*Inline exhaust setup

Cool! What do you use for finish?

Haha thanks

Yep, that software worked well for me. Eventually I upgraded the board and switched to LightBurn.

Those look great

😆

Thanks

Yes, and making very light passes. The other option is gluing sacrificial boards to the end and then cutting them off later.

Or skip planing and just sand, that is probably the safest.

I expect to see updates over in the laser cutter community!

It is obviously unique to each person’s use case but I have heard lots of anecdotal conversation around people getting membership to makerspaces to get access to CNC machines and end up spending the bulk of their time on the laser cutters.

I am a hobby woodworker so I think a CNC would be cool, but spend more time wishing I had a bigger laser cutter than wanting a CNC.

Yep that would work too!

I think it would probably be worth looking into an 80w-100w lasers with larger cutting beds for you. There is a huge community around the Chinese Red/black style laser cutters that are a steps above the k40 but still significantly cheaper than other commercial/consumer models.

That will likely be what I upgrade to next.

I have not tried cutting pcbs with a laser cutter but I am sure someone has so the results are out there somewhere.

I figured it’s worth sharing mistakes for people to learn from.

That could work orI think I could potentially shorten the front legs so it tilts more forward. This is a few years old now, it’s mainly just my chair for sitting.

I stick to mainly 3mm Baltic Birch plywood and acrylic for cutting. I have done up to 6mm. There are lots of things it can cut/etch you just have to be careful understanding what should/should not be cut. For example, vinyl can be cut but should not because it releases caustic gases that damage the machine and your lungs.

For engraving there really isn’t a thickness limit, more just what fits inside the machine. I have engraved hardwoods, plywood,cork,slate, painted tiles,

As a CO2 laser it cannot cut metal. It can cut clear acrylic and etch glass.

I love it!

I did a write up on the original purchase and unboxing here !lasercutting@lemm.ee

Initial price was $365, I have added mods and upgrades over the years.

I ended up going down a rabbit hole which ultimately led me to K40 laser cutters, which I ended up buying and starting a whole new hobby!

Nicely done 👍

Regarding power consumption I found this on the Trotec laser website. In the example they provide they are working with an 80watt laser so cut that in half for the K40. They are a commercial laser company so they are also assuming you are cutting every day.

https://www.troteclaser.com/en-us/learn-support/faqs/laser-power-consumption

In order to give you a specific figure for power consumption, we have drafted the following example:

A Speedy 400 laser machine with 80 watts laser power An average effective working time of 2 hours a day Of which 50% of the time with maximum laser power (80 > watts) and 50% of the time with half laser power (40 watts) This results in a power consumption of approx. 50 kWh per month, which corresponds to the consumption of 2 office PCs. This is always a surprisingly low value for many customers.

Looks like a nice gift!