I installed this 2W eBay laser last night. Took about 2 hours to get everything setup but it’s working well. I made the mount out of acrylic (it’s what I had lying around) but I’m planning to cut it from aluminum. Not to bad given the price! I wanted to start with something more affordable and then invest in the Jtech laser once I felt I could justify it. Then I’ll move this one to my 12x12 x-carve.
Sounds like a good deal for 80 to get started, I might look into that. What program are you using it with. Don’t know nothing about lasers thats why IM asking.
Don’t know nothing about lasers thats why IM asking.
The first thing you should know about lasers is that they will damage your eyes and burn your skin if not used properly. Eye damage occurs in milliseconds and is not reversible.
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I know that much about them. In my job they are thinking about buying a laser cutter. We already own a cnc gerber profile but personally Ive never work with a laser cutter before, thats why I wanted to get into it with the smaller stuff before I start messing around with the big stuff. I was just wondering how hard is it to make them work with the xcarve and what program is best to run them.
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You would be better served by starting out with an enclosed laser cutter rather than an open design like the X-carve. In a business setting you don’t usually have restrictions on access to equipment and someone that is not knowledgeable could get injured due to lack of information about the safety issues associated with using laser light.
If you are talking about using a laser at home just to get familiar with laser operations this would be a way to do it, with a much higher risk factor.
Don’t get me wrong, adding a laser to an open system can be done safely, but you have to be very careful as the consequences of an error can be severe.
Here is a video of the installation of a JTech laser module:
thanks for the info, I will keep that in mind!
Used Chillipeppr to get it up and going. You can adjust the intensity fairly easily and get a feel for it that way using M3 and M5 commands. It was much easier than I thought it would be to setup. Just two wires for the TTL from the header pins on the g-shield. I’m going to play with different gbrl firmware tonight and use picengraver. I’m fairly new to lasers as well.
…and yes, I did get a good set of laser safety glasses rated for 445-450nm lasers. Still woking on better ventilation though I’m just doing wood burning for now.
sounds interesting, Im gonna start watching some youtube videos and get more info on them. But I will definitely get one in the future for my x carve. Thank you for the info!