Has anyone ever used one of these or heard anything about them? I looking to purchase a small foot print laser engraver and this looks like a good start for a tight budget.
The one question that i cant seem to get answered is what is the normal lifespan of something like this as i have heard the laser tube is expensive to replace?
Thanks
It’s basically a chinese built laser that runs with a glass tube and water cooler, there not very good as far as software or support and speed are concerned. You can find the same ones all over ebay for much less. Also when getting a chinese machine figure the strength they quote to be double what it usually is.
Im seeing these with alot of mixed reviews. I want a laser engraver, and the Epilog laser which is one of the really good ones, their smallest starts at 8K so thats way out of my budget right now.I have seen some laser kits for the shapoko 2 and those seem kind of slow engraving. not sure what to do at this point.
I understand that they are junk. First it is too small to put any reasonable sized piece of material in there. I think the cutting area of that one is 200mm x 300mm. Second the controllers are pretty bad. I have heard of people replacing the controllers with something like a g shield or retina engrave, and getting these things to work.
When I was looking for a cheap laser cutter, I found the ones from Full Spectrum Laser was the best deal I could find. I think I paid them about $2300 for a 40W laser cutter and a retina engrave controller. I don’t think they sell that model anymore, and their latest model is a bit expensive. Even with the full spectrum, I had to do a lot of tweaking, and the beam alignment so that I can get even power across the whole cutting surface is very tricky.
The controller matters too. The toolpath planning for a laser cutter is different from a regular CNC. In some cases you have to worry about constant speed so the cut depth is the same, so you have to turn off the beam while you are decelerating or accelerating.
[meta note: I updated the description of this thread to be more specific. Try to be as specific as possible. We want to focus on long-term value of these discussions, so try to imagine the words you would search for if you had the same question]
Hey your laser is good but you can try the best one in market for using cutting and fabrication on different material.
http://www.walshequipment.com.au/fabrication
