Agreed. I ordered 2 extra sets of safety glasses for “spectators” 
Can this laser cut 1/4" acrylic or just etch it?
Awesome. Looking on eBay it said up to 3mm. Which is well shy of 1/4. I believe. Signs look great. Where are you getting the LEDs for those?
Thanks. Led strips are from Amazon.
im curious. those led strips are so long compared to how much you use. do you buy extra parts to continue using the extra cable or just but a new set up every time?
I’ve used these for other things. You just cut the strip the length you want and connect to the positive\negative pads with your power supply.
If you have more strip left over and want to use for something else you just get another power supply.
Just completed an air assist upgrade though I don’t think it was needed for this application. This has been a fun adventure making things with the X-Carve and the cheap Chinese laser.
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Coming along nicely! I just did a run of 20 edge lit sign awards and the little chinese laser functioned without a hiccup. It’s already paid for itself 3 times over. In addition to the xcarve its the best tool investment I’ve ever made.
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awesome!
The acrylic projects are pretty awesome. I enjoyed making this for a good friend who recently retired. The base was made from eucalyptus and cut with a router. I should have used the X-carve to make the cuts in the wood. It would have looked better.
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Super nice award. People love when they get an edge lit sign, but flip out when you hand them the remote and it changes color 
Is that 1/4in? If so, what settings did you use? I also just “upgraded” to the hacked X5 Coreldraw from Yuusuf and like it much better than 12.
Anyone thinking of purchasing these lasers, they are now $319 on Ebay. Be very careful though, they are like potato chips, can’t have just one! I now own 2 of them! My second was a used one that needed some TLC.
ScottW- I will have to check on the X5. I used 350mm/sec (I believe that is the correct units as I am away from the home while writing this) and the engraving function. I didn’t modify the power settings from the original setup in the CorelDraw 12. I used 6 mm/sec for one pass and 4 mm/sec for a second pass to cut the edges. It seems to create a pretty clean cut. The material was 1/4" acrylic.
So, not sure if anyone here can answer this, but I’m going to ask anyway 
This $366 laser on eBay looks pretty decent, but I notice that the bed size is far smaller than that on my XCarve, and it “appears” that there are a number of other mods that should be made to the system once you have it to help ensure it operates properly.
I’m very interested in the lighted acrylic awards, but I’m wondering if it’s possible to make them with my XCarve and the JTech laser, or is the K40 the only way I can achieve these results?
The bed in most of the Chinese lasers is 200 x 300 mm. That said, there is a lot you can do. JTech has it place. I own one and use it along with the CO2 laser. You can do everything with the X-Carve without the laser. It depends on your skills and of course room for toys!
I’m definitely in favor of more toys, I just didn’t want to spend $400 on a separate machine with different software and a new learning curve, if I could just use the JTech laser on my XCarve (since I’m buying one anyway)…
I do some projects with the 40w laser and others with the 2.8w jtech laser. The size of the area to work with is definitely a factor. If you want to go with a larger area for the 40w laser, the purchase price goes up very quickly. The upgrades that I have done with the cheap Chinese laser has been about $100 to include air assist and associated air brush pump, upgraded mirror and lens, and water pump flow switch. I did a simple mod to the bed that the material sits on and someday I would like to upgrade to a mechanical bed and perhaps better electronics but I am not ready to spend the additional money at this point.
There are differences in what I feel I can do with the 40w versus 2.8w but I think it namely comes down to time. With the 2.8w demos from jtech, they show you can cut through acrylic. I believe that it is possible but also believe there is a time difference as well as multiple passes in order to do it with any level of thickness. I do wish I could use the 40w on the larger 1mx1m X-carve bed. In the end, combined the two tools in the shed (X-carve and cheap Chinese laser) have been an amazing combo.
Thanks, that helps. I wasn’t sure what the average “reasonable” set of mods were for the 40w, so I was imagining doubling the cost to make it usable. $100 is definitely a reasonable upgrade price, especially considering what I’ve spent on my XCarve in upgrades.
For now I’ll stick with the JTech 3.8w, keeping the 40w as an option for later.
One last question - you mentioned air brush pump, which I assume deals with keeping smoke etc… away, what did you have to do, if anything, special, to vent the machine? Does the included hose work or was that also an upgrade? Thanks!
DarrylKegg- sorry for the delay as I was travelling. The air assist is to help with a few factors like reducing fires on the material you are engraving/cutting and it does seem to allow me to lower my power settings a bit. As far as the stock machine goes, I have been able to make some pretty neat things so far as it came out of the box. The google plus forum for the DK40 or cheap Chinese laser is a very good info site on some challenges others have had. It appears the majority of folks are able to do things right out of the box. There have been a few that have had to make complaints about this or that being broken in shipping. As far as the air/exhaust removal goes, I haven’t changed anything they sent me other than reducing via cutting with a jig saw the large air vent they have in place from the stock machine. The air vent frame work is large so cutting it down allowed me to open up the space a bit. Perhaps not more useable cutting area but more area to put my stock material down on the bed. A friend of mine sent me a post from ebay showing a $268 price. Damn! I spent $366 on it. After all is said and done, I would love to have additional upgrades to the electronics to make it less proprietary and be able to use g-code and would love to have the Gucci raising bed, but those items are not required. The pics I posted previously on this thread were mostly made with the stock machine. I only recently added the air assist and have only had enough time to engrave some mirror stock I bought from amazon.