I’ve had a laser on my list of tools to acquire for well over 10 years. I’ve thought about building one, but with no prior experience with laser tubes I never really felt comfortable starting that project.
I noticed, maybe last year, cheap Chinese made 40w laser cutters (K40) has been coming down in price and contemplated getting one, but my money was stretched to thin between other projects. At the time and I only had $50/month budgeted that I could spend without the wife’s say (we call it blow money) because we were on the last stretch of a multi-year effort of pouring extra money into the mortgage to pay off our last debt. Plus I would need to build a new controller for it because I couldn’t find anyone happy with the software it came with.
I came across a buildlog for conversion of one of these lasers a couple of weeks ago. He had the laser at $487 and replacement electronics at $65. It had been a few months since I really spent any blow money… I could do $550 in another couple of months.
I started shopping and found the laser for $387 and the replacement electronics (Arduino Mega2560, RAMPS 1.4, Reprap Smart Full LCD, and A4988s) for $35 total. Done.
A week later I found a crate on my porch. Most importantly everything, including the glass tube, was in one piece. Pulling the box out of the crate was a bit awkward by myself, but it was going to be hours before my wife got home, so I managed.
The software came with a USB hardware key. (really!?) Trying to get that to work with Wine under Linux was probably not going to be worth the effort to test it since I was going to pitch it after replacing the electronics. Microsoft products don’t run in my household, so I’ll just have to wait for the new electronics before I can test it.
I didn’t realize the K40 laser intensity was manually set only with a potentiometer. So, not only is the Arduino/RAMPS open source and run with g code, it adds the ability to dynamically change the power output during a program. It looks like I should be able to just drop the firmware in place thanks to Lasing Makers Network and TurnkeyTyranny modifying Marlin (the firmware the 3D printer RepRap uses) for use with this laser.
