Materials Testing

I've probably put about an hour of laser time on my tube by now, Here's the first few things I've been cutting and some stuff I've learned.

RetinaEngrave and Illustrator

I use Illustrator for a lot of the graphic design I do so naturally, I'm using it with the Full Spectrum Laser. Their print driver makes this VERY easy. Just hit print and off it goes to RetinaEngrave (which has to be open in the background and already connected to the laser). Here's a few things I've learned the hard way:

Make sure you are in RGB mode in File -> Document Color Mode. The couple of times I had the file in CMYK, weird stuff happened. Notably, on one cut it did two passes on each vector line though it was only set to one, another time only some of the lines showed.
Use a line stroke of .25 or less. I found that anything over .25 would cause RetinaEngrave to double up the line in order to make the vector wider than the laser cut. I've been using .1 lately and it works great.
Make sure Media Size is set to "FSL Hobby Series Gen5 20x12" in the Print Dialog box. When ready to print, make sure this is selected in the print dialog box or the print area might get cropped.
Make sure artwork is within artboard boundary. In "Document Setup" make sure to make your artboard bigger than your artwork.
It's important that line segments are joined or RetinaEngrave will treat each segment as a line and instead of following a path, will jump from line to line. For example, if a square is just 4 line segments, it may do the verticals first then the horizontals instead of just tracing the shape of a square if the vectors were all joined. We ran into this issue importing from CAD to Illustrator with a DXF file. The file was a large array of 6mm squares, initially importing them into RE took forever until I realized it was importing thousands of vector lines instead of hundreds of squares.

I'll update if I find anything else but overall I've been happy with Illustrator and RetinaEngrave. The scales translate and the cuts are true to size.

The test pattern that is included in the software is pretty handy, though I really wish I could specify the number of grid steps it does instead of the hard wired 7x10. It basically cuts a grid of squares starting at low power low speed in the upper left and ends with high power high speed in the bottom right as you see in the image to the right. This is great for working out the optimal speeds and powers for a given material. I'll probably end up making my own version of this since the software only allows you to change the upper and lower limits of the range for both speed and power but not the number of steps. I.E. you can tell it to test from 0-50% power and from 20-80% speed, but no matter what it will do 7 steps between those speed values and 10 between the power values. There is also a focus ramp test which I have yet to use but should soon.

Cuttin'

After the first cuts on cardboard I grabbed some cheapo 1/4" 5-ply plywood from Home Depot I had laying around in the garage and had a go at it. It took at least 2 passes to cut through it and going really slow at full power. The charring around the cuts is really bad to the point of it being charcoal. I think this wood would etch really nice but for cutting, not so good.

So I ran to Home Depot and got a few sheets of 1/8 in. x 2 ft. x 4 ft. MDF Cut To Size Panel for about $4 each. I also got a panel of 1/4 in. x 2 ft. x 4 ft. Birch Project Panel Plywood (which I have yet to test). I cut the panels up into 4 20" x 12" pieces which left me with a couple 12" x 8" pieces per sheet. It cuts very nicely and I settled on a Speed setting of 30 and Power of 80 to get a nice cut. The char on the cut is nice but it does leave a pretty bad smoke stain on the top surface ... which is probably more glue gunk than smoke. I purchased some film (06.50 inch x 100 yds R-Tape Clear Choice AT-60) from SignWarehouse.com today to see if I cover the pieces with that before cutting will prevent the smoke char on the top surface. The smell is pretty strong and it sticks with the wood for days if not forever. It also rasters pretty well as you can see in the lower left of the image to below.

It's pretty impressive how detailed and thin you can make the cuts and the piece is still pretty solid. Those "drips" are insanely tiny.

So after that I decided to try a long Raster Then Vector style cut and I came across these Palago game tiles on Thingiverse which looked like a great test, not to mention the kind of game I love to play. I redid the file in Illustrator CS6 (which you can download here). I cut at Power 85 Speed 30 and rastered at Power 70 Speed 100. Sweet.

I've also cut sticky back ripstop nylon at Power 10 Speed 100 and it cut the nylon but didn't go all the way through the paper backing so it was perfect for peeling. No photo ATM. Next was skateboard grip tape... Jessup to be exact. I cut on the paper backing side and Power 60+ Speed 100 seemed to work well. I tried to cut from the front and just cut the front grip and not through the paper backing but no such luck. Regardless it comes out well and is easy to peel afterwards. Going to do some custom grip for my brother's skate shop FIDNA at some point soon. Results below:

Lastly, today I cut some 1/32" or .9mm thick ABS plastic sheeting. It's textured on one side and shiny on the other and cuts well at about Power 100 Speed 80-90 from either the textured or shiny side. Though it does warp if you do a lot of very close cuts quickly as you can see in the test grid. We cut out a matrix of squares to fit around RGB LED strip lights that my buddy is using to make a large timer for his DLG comps... more explanation and photos once it's done since that probably makes no sense to anyone.

Issues/Problems

The only real problems I've run into with RetinaEngrave have been with the software hanging on launch, and it's usually just because I've pressed a button before the software was fully loaded. I've now learned to wait until it's connected to the laser, and the spinning wheel at the bottom left of the window is spinning. If it's stopped and I press a jog button, the software tends to hang.

Another bug is that every once and a while a jog button will "stick" and the head will run to the end of the axis. I've had this happen numerous times where I'll click quickly on a jog button to move the head and the head will just keep going until I click the button again or until it hits a stop. Still haven't quite sorted that out yet.

I've also just today had an issue where cuts along the X axis weren't as deep as those along Y which I haven't sorted... but I think is due to the guide wheel tension. I have to do a cleaning and alignment soon and will check this issue out then.

And lastly, the 1/4" ID hose on the air assist pump blew off today mid cut and scared the shit out of me because I had no idea where the loud buzz was suddenly coming from. Which reminds me... I need to find a quieter air assist. The one from FSL is crazy loud and by far the loudest component of the system. I can't cut at night in the house with it or my 2 year old would not be happy.

Posted on March 17, 2013 by loren cox and filed under Laser and tagged FSL 40W 5th Gen Laser laser materials problems settings Tips.

First Cuts, and Networking

She works beautifully! It took a buddy and I about 20 minutes to figure out the networking setup so I could use the ethernet port instead of USB, but it worked perfectly first shot after we got that sorted.

Using a Full Spectrum Laser with RetinaEngrave on Mac OS X

Want to run RetinaEngrave but don't have a PC? Want to run it in a virtual machine with an ethernet connection instead of a dodgy USB connection? Read on.

I bought a used iMac to run my 3D printer and Laser. It's the environment I'm used to and I'd rather have the option of both operating systems rather than just Windows. So I'm running Parallels 8 with Windows 7 on MacOS X 10.8.2 on a late 2009 iMac 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo with 8GB of RAM. So far so good. Installing Windows was no problem. Getting it online was similarly no problem. The issue came when I plugged up the ethernet cable from the 5th Gen Hobby Laser to the iMac and tried to pull an IP address. The laser boots up and searches the network for a DHCP server to get an IP address. If it can't find one it defaults to 254.253.xx.xx or some such I can't remember off the top of my head. If I set up the networking in Parallels so it used the ethernet port on the iMac, I could connect to the laser, assign it IP addresses, and run the laser, but I couldn't connect to the internet to register the laser or browse, and if I set it to a shared connection, I could get to the internet but not the laser as the virtual machine was using the wifi connection and not touching the ethernet ... plus OS X had control of it. Sorta confusing and not sure I still have my head around it... but... THIS IS WHAT WORKS (if you are using a WiFi connection to your router):

First get the networking going in Windows in Parallels so you can get to the web with a browser. This is easy as it just works after install by default as long as the connection on the Mac side is fine. Plug up the ethernet cable from the laser to the Mac, making sure the laser is off. Go to the Parallels settings -> Hardware -> Network and make sure it looks like this. Your MAC address will be different obviously.

Now go to the Sharing Preference panel in OS X and turn on Internet Sharing. Share your connection from Wi-Fi to computers using Ethernet. This was the magic bullet we couldn't figure out for a while. This allows the mac to share the WiFi connection and the ethernet port with the virtual machine at the same time. If you are using ethernet on your Mac to connect to your router... god help you. Actually... kidding... that should be much easier, just plug the laser into the network via a switch and you should be good to go without this last step. This worked great for me, your mileage may vary.

Now when I start up the Laser it pulls 192.168.2.2 from the local network, and RetinaEngrave sees it quickly. It registered and all was well with the world. I will assign it an IP when I get over my fear of changing something that works unnecessarily.

First Cuts

I grabbed the handiest vector file I had laying around from a logo I designed for Squirrel Wingsuits, loaded it up in Illustrator, and clicked print. RetinaEngrave got it, I scaled it, turned the power down to 10% and hit print. The stroke was 1pt in Illustrator, which it turns out makes the laser do two passes on the line as that's relatively thick. Next try was at .5pt and it was much better. Then I adjusted the head focus... even better. Then scaled it up and went to 75% power and it made the beautiful cut you see to the left. Awesome. The precision is nuts. We then tried a raster image at 4% power and again, impressive precision with micro perforations on the cardboard surface. Then some text. Works beautifully. Beer to celebrate! Very very impressed with this thing. I can't wait to start some creative projects with it very soon.

Side note: I got a call back this morning from the message I left yesterday about the red diode being a line not a dot. So one day call back time. Again, not bad for a company that is shat on all over the forums for having horrible customer service. I was worried, but am now very stoked with my decision to go with FSL.

Posted on March 5, 2013 by loren cox and filed under Laser and tagged ethernet FSL 40W 5th Gen Laser laser mac networking osx parallels.

Fire Fire Fire

A quick note about something I didn't mention yet. Fire. This is a laser beam firing at combustable materials after all. I've read the horror stories and got another one from the guys at FSL when I picked up my laser, so I decided early on to buy a proper fire extinguisher. I did the research and you don't want to use your standard wet chemical fire extinguisher around anything you care about, especially electronics. It's corrosive and very hard to clean up. That leaves CO2 or Halotron. Halotron is more expensive but covers a bit more as you can see in the chart below.

So I spent the $117 and got a Kidde Halotron Fire Extinguisher, 2-1/2-Pound extinguisher off Amazon. Supposedly the clean up isn't bad and it won't kill the laser if I have to use it. It now sits under the desk ready to grab.

Posted on March 5, 2013 by loren cox and filed under Laser and tagged extinguisher fire laser.

Laser Alignment and Support

Aligned the laser today. Having watched the alignment tutorial video from FSL, I ordered these Intermec 4" x 6" White Direct Thermal Printer Label from Amazon to use while aligning the laser as it looked way easier to use sticker labels than taping receipts over the mirrors every time I want to align them. They were $5 for a roll of 100 and came Amazon Prime style 2 day shipping free. But, somebody screwed up. What I got was what you see to the right... a roll of 1000 that weighs 16 lbs. Oops. Anyone need labels?

While following the procedure in the video I noticed that the red diode spot wasn't much of a spot, it was more of a horizontal line. So I called FSL on their direct support number; no one answered so I left a message. I then sent an email with the images you see to the left. I got a reply in 40 minutes. Not too bad for a company having "terrible support" according to the forums. Henry said it's normal and to use the center of the line. Done. Fired a bunch of test fires and got it pretty well aligned, though I might just do it again to practice before I run any jobs. The video is easy to follow and it's super nice to have the red dot to align with instead of having to fire it over and over to get the alignment right. You can't see the actual CO2 laser beam, but you can see the red diode laser so a beam combiner shoots them through the same optical path. So once you line up the red dot with the first mark you make before mirror 2, you know they are following the same path, making alignment of the subsequent mirrors easier. Overall mine was pretty close to spot on already, I just move the beam closer to the center of the lens.

I also tensioned the guide wheels on the X carriage as demonstrated in the video Full Spectrum Laser 5th Gen CO2 Hobby Laser Proper Wheel Adjustment. It takes TINY adjustments on the eccentric wheels to get this right.

Tomorrow the iMac arrives so hopefully... first cuts tomorrow night if I can get all the software installed and Parallels/Windows 7 playing nicely together!

Posted on March 4, 2013 by loren cox and filed under Laser and tagged alignment FSL 40W 5th Gen Laser laser support.

Laser Exhaust Complete, First Test Fire

Completed the exhaust system for my FSL 5th gen laser today and did the first test fire! All seems well. First the exhaust, then some nit picks about the setup. As mentioned in the first post about the exhaust, I got the Harbor Freight 1HP dust collector, the router speed control, and this 4" blast gate. To complete the setup I ordered this 4" stay put flexible duct hose, and made a run to Home Depot for the following:

4" x 5' metal rigid vent pipe
4" dryer vent hood
two 4" 90 degree adjustable vent pipe elbows
4" x 2ft alum. vent pipe
four 8"x8"x16" cinder blocks
3 roofing shingles
four 2.5" 5/16 bolts/nuts/washers
2 hinges

With all this and a bunch of spare lumber I had around, I built the exhaust box. I used 2x2 for the corner supports, 3/4" plywood for the side, 3/4" MDF for the base, and some 1/2" chip board for the top. The base is around 16" square, same for the back, front is 13" x 16", sides 16" with angle cut at top to make sloped roof. Basic layout is like so.

The blower is bolted to the MDF with some 2.5" 5/16ths bolts.

I then cut the holes for the intake and exhaust and screwed it all together. There is a notch in the back side of the floor to run the power cable through. Running it out the bottom keeps water from running down the cable into the box, this way it'll just drip off the bottom. Some duct was run between the exhaust and the dryer vent, and a 90 deg elbow for the intake both hose clamped on. I put some hinges on the top so I have access to change motor brushes or clean it out etc.

I threw some shingles on top for rain protection but we'll see how that goes. Also some aluminum tape around the inlet hole to keep water out.

The window insert is 1/2" plywood with a 4 1/4" circle cut into it for the blast gate and a notch for the power cable. The cable comes in the window and plugs into the router speed control with is mounted on the inside. I painted it black and am using cheapo foam pipe insulation as weather stripping and it works great.

The blast gate lets me shut off outside air to keep the tube from freezing in the cold. Pretty simple setup and it's pretty quiet when not running full blast, which I don't foresee doing too often as it's a LOT of air at full speed.

Pretty happy with the setup. Easy to remove if I need to move the laser, and pretty quiet for me. We'll see what the neighbors think.

Setup and Test Fire

Setting up the water pump and air compressor was pretty simple. They forgot to put in an air tube so I had to run to Petco and get a 1/4" OD air tube for $5. The air compressor comes with a splitter which is semi annoying as you have to block all the split ports since you just need one to go to the 1/4" OD air assist input to the printer. This is my ghetto quick rig just to test it. I'll come up with something better.

The air hose on the inside of the laser that come out of the coupler wasn't seated very well so I had to take the side panel off the laser and reseat it. Otherwise everything seemed well assembled. I threw some thermal paper on the bed and fired the pumps up and did a test fire and the laser looks well aligned. Ready to rock! Just waiting on the iMac to get here that will be used to run the laser so I can run an actual job! Can't wait.

Posted on March 3, 2013 by loren cox and filed under Laser and tagged exhaust FSL 40W 5th Gen Laser laser.

Got it

Picked up the laser yesterday from FSL headquarters in Las Vegas. They (Lane, and Joe) gave us a nice demo and answered the few questions I had. Super nice and helpful people. Interesting to see their assembly process and warehouse. Kicking myself now for not taking photos. Laser is unboxed and in good shape (other than some packing foam that wasn't covered with plastic properly that is now glued to the bottom of the case). Gotta finish the exhaust system today!

Posted on March 2, 2013 by loren cox and filed under Laser and tagged laser.

Laser Exhaust

A laser burns/vaporizes to cut material, which means lots of smoke and nastiness coming off the laser bed, which needs to be vented away not only for optical reasons (a laser shooting through smoke gets scattered and loses power) but for health/sanity reasons. Originally I was going to put the laser in the basement workspace but after realizing I'd need to be present during cuts for safety reasons, I decided I'd rather spend that time in my office rather than the freezing ass cold basement. So... how to vent/exhaust a laser out of my office... I found this great "Laser Exhaust Systems Basics" article very helpful.

The FSL 40W 5th gen hobby laser I've ordered has a 4 inch exhaust port on the back, which can be seen in this YouTube video. They offer an exhaust fan for $250 as an accessory. I know I could get one for half that, and even FSL suggests as much mentioning the one from Harbor Freight I'll talk about below. The exhaust will come out of the laser via metal 4" flexible ducting (dryer hose style) and pass through a 4-Inch Blast Gate in a window seal probably made of painted wood. From there I'll probably run metal vent pipe down to the exhaust fan outside of the house in a weatherproof box (doghouse? plastic tub? something like this but much nicer?). This will keep most of the noise outside of the house and the blast gate will allow me to keep the cold air off the laser tube when the system is off and control the airflow when needed to a finer degree than the speed controller. Nice negative pressure system sucking air through the laser bed and venting outside. But what fan to use...?

After reading way to much about exhaust fans on the forums... I settled on a couple of options.

This thread on the FSL forums recommends an in-line bilge fan, specifically a Rule 240 Marine Bilge Blower, which is $33 (plus a $17 power adaptor... it's 12V after all). That's cheap! Noise level reports are all over the map. You could easily put a dimmer switch on it to control speed. It's rated at 240 Cubic Feet/Minute (CFM).

The other more popular option on all the forums is the 1HP Mini Dust Collector at Harbor Freight, referred to as "the red one". It's $99 (easily $80 with HF coupons) and can be speed controlled with a router speed controller for $20. So supposedly much more powerful but much more expensive. I like the easy speed control that will also allow me to turn the fan on and off remotely. Con is that it uses a brushed motor so the reports are that the brushes have to be replaced fairly often with regular use and that they are hard to find. The other popular option is this "green one" from Harbor Freight, which is brushless so it'll last a lot longer with less maintenance, but it's soft start so it can't be speed controlled. It's supposedly much quieter, though "the red one" is supposedly pretty quiet when not at full power.

So I'm going for the red one with speed controller as of now. (Ordered on 2/20/2013 with blast gate and 9" level from HF)

Concerns

The whole negative pressure thing could be interesting. As the Exhaust Systems Basics article mentions, a system like this needs "make up air"... or air to replace all that air you are sucking out of your space. A 500 CFM setup will suck all the air out of a 8' x 8' x 8' room in one minute, creating a vacuum. You are also pumping out all of the heat/cool of your room/house depending on the season. So in winter I'm basically blowing all my heat out the window. I'm going to set it up and see how it goes. I might have to set up an outside air feeder system or just end up putting it in the basement workshop where that's not a concern. We shall see...

Posted on February 20, 2013 by loren cox and filed under Laser and tagged exhaust FSL 40W 5th Gen Laser.

Universal Construction Kit

The Free Universal Construction Kit offers adapters between Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Gears! Gears!, K’Nex, Krinkles (Bristle Blocks), Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Zome, and Zoob... you just have to download the files and print them or send them off to your favorite 3D Printing bureau.

Posted on February 18, 2013 by loren cox and filed under 3D Printing and tagged 3D printing.

The Laser

The laser I settled on is a 40W CO2 Hobby Laser (5th gen) by Full Spectrum Laser.

I ordered on February 1, 2013, order #100001667. It should ship... Ummm... 4-6 weeks... so no idea. An email asking for queue status received nothing (and so the shitty support begins!... more on this later).

Cost: $3,649.00 Shipping: $0, I'm going to drive to Vegas to pick it up. I'm going to source the exhaust fan and air compressor myself instead of their $250 and $150 add-on options. They provide a small water pump for laser tube cooling for free which you are supposed to put in a 5 gallon bucket of distilled water.

Specs:

Work Area 20"x12"
Machine Dimensions 31.5"x20"x8.25"
Net Weight 70 lbs
Laser Type Sealed CO2 laser tube
focusing mechanism allows for fully removable Z floor (unlimited material size)
Laser Power 40W Peak (30-35W Average)
Power Supply AC 110V Native (220V Option Available)
microSD slot for storage of up to 32GB of job storage (run without a computer connected)
integrated beam combiner+red dot pointer comes standard ($300 value)
Free HoneyComb Table
up to 1000 dpi resolution and 0.001" repeatability
includes 2" lens for cutting and engraving
Gross Power Less than 1000W
Driving System Stepper
Cooling Mode Water-cooling and protection system
Operating Temperature 0 - 45°C
Z table Pat Pend Sliding Z + Removable Floor
Controlling Software: RetinaEngrave USB Direct Print Drivers (100% USA Software)
dual processor ARM+DSP RetinaEngrave 3D Ethernet+USB

Software and Manual can be downloaded here. The HEAVILY censored support forums are here (more on this later). The FSL Youtube channel is here with setup videos and demos. General laser cutter/engraver forums can be found at Sawmill Creek and CNC Zone.

Why FSL...

SO... this was a painful decision which I waffled on for nearly a month after doing tons of research. From what I gathered, when it comes to lasers, you basically have a few options for a low end power 40-60 Watt laser cutter/etcher:

Buy from a super cheap Chinese laser off of eBay or directly from a Chinese manufacturer like G-Weike. This will save you tons of money up front, but cost you lots of time after. You can get twice the power for half (or more) the cost of an American made laser, but you get Chinglish manuals, a cheaply made machine that WILL need lots of fixing up after shipping, no direct support options, and poor software. So cheap up front, expensive in time and possibly $ upgrades later
Buy an American or European made laser from someone like Epilog, Trotec, or Universal. There are other players but those are the big boys. These are high end, well made and well supported machines with solid software, and mystery pricing... which means they are expensive. They all offer low end machines but even those are 3, 4 or 5 times what you can spend on an equivalently powered Chinese laser. They use dealer networks and negotiable prices so finding out the cost of these can be a pain unless you want to deal with a bunch of salesman and make a lot of calls. Even used 40 Watt Epilogs go for over $12,000. So you pay heavily for solid support and industrial grade machines. I considered this and looked locally and found a $9000 used Epilog, but since I don't have a serious business plan, I thought better of it.
Buy a Chinese laser that has been imported into the US, setup, and rebadged. These are mid range price-wise between the above two options. Rabbit Laser and Hurricane Lasers are a couple of examples, though there are others. They use Chinese tubes and usually fully Chinese built machines that they import, check, add features to, and sell with a small premium. Here you get better service but still usually twice what you'd pay if you imported yourself.
Build Your Own. There are a few options here, but from my research the best option around for a DIY laser cutter in this range is the Buildlog.net 2.x laser designed by Bart Dring. More details here. The whole setup is open source and Bill of Materials (BOM) are provided and allows you to use the software and controller of your choice. Some custom parts are available as kits if you don't have access to machines shops or whathaveyou to make them, but the problem is that Bart only makes these in limited quantities, rarely, and on a first come first served basis after posting a note on the forum and his twitter feed. So some parts can be hard to come by. Supposedly you can build this laser for under $2000. This is super appealing to me but after considering the time sink it would take to first get my head around it (the site is only semi-organized... it would take a lot of forum digging to find all the hitches etc), to get ahold of all the parts, build, and debug... the monetary savings seem insignificant.
Buy Full Spectrum Laser. These guys had a successful Kickstarter campaign for their 5th Gen 40W hobby laser and have been backordered ever since trying to fill the demand. They apparently were in category 3 above for a while with their original 40W hobby laser (between $1850 and $2400) but with this new model they say they took all they knew from the Chinese lasers and build their own (apparently borrowing heavily from the BuildLog.net laser mentioned above)... and that adds a premium as this one costs $3500. They still use cheapo $300 Chinese tubes but the rest of the machine is an in-house design with their own software and driver board. They claim all over the place about being made in the USA, and that has an appeal in that their office is 6 hours from where I sit, and if something breaks to the point where I need to see someone face to face, I could drive to Vegas and handle it. They claim great support and great reviews on Google Checkout, however a brief search of the general forums listed above will reveal quite a bit of vitriol aimed at FSL and their business practices. Here is a good example of one person's experience with them, and their method of buying good reviews and quieting bad ones. They censor their support forum under the guise of making it more useful and a resource for it's users, but there's obviously more to it than that once you start reading people's experiences with posts being deleted and accounts suspended. This would usually make me run the opposite direction, but being well aware of the power of the vocal minority on forums (for both good and bad)... I decided to take the risk. This is the price point and time sink level I'm willing to take on, and if it works, awesome. If not, I'll have the same frustrations I would have had going with a cheaper laser anyway... so it's a gamble. Hopefully by picking it up and checking the place out in person, I'll have a better idea of how to interact with them. It's clear emails aren't the way. But... I'm looking at this as a learning experience so if I have to work on the laser a bit so be it. I went through this type of random great/horrible service with my helicopter from DJI so I sort of know the ropes a bit anyway. This is hopefully just a stepping stone to a big boy... more on that later.

Accessories

I haven't purchased anything yet, but as mentioned I'll need an exhaust fan and an air assist pump. I have a couple I'm looking at but am reconsidering lately as I think I'm going to put both this and my 3D Printer in my office, so I'll have to come up with an exhaust system that can sit outside of my window and pull from there to help alleviate noise a bit. I'll update this when I do.

What's Next

LASERSAUR. Ultimately I want to build one of these, if the laser thing pans out at all. It's a huge 2' x 4' 100+ Watt open source hardware and software laser. It's beautiful and made with extruded aluminum framing. I think I want to build them more than use them. If this project was about 6 months more mature, I'd probably have dove in and started to build one. But, they don't have engraving sorted yet, and there's a lot of bugs still being worked out. But just check out their BOM and Manual. The level of organization and support make this one VERY appealing. It's very well documented. I'm keeping an eye on the Lasersaur Google Group and once they get the raster stuff sorted and work out the major bugs, I'll probably start building one and sell my FSL. One could actually make money off a workhorse laser like this instead of doing hobby grade trinkets.

WHY?

I have a list of small projects I want to do with this. I'm not sure if any of them are sellable or could pay for the machine over time but we shall see. I'm hoping to use it to enable me to do a few artistic projects I've wanted to do for a while but haven't made the time for... I find sinking a ton of money into something makes for good motivation to use it and learn it quickly. Either way it's something new to learn and should be a good mix of tech and hands on art ... which is the balance I've been trying to find for years.

Posted on February 14, 2013 by loren cox and filed under Laser and tagged FSL 40W 5th Gen Laser.

The 3D Printer

The printer I settled on is an Aluminatus TrinityOne by Trinity Labs.

I ordered on 01/27/2013, order #1320. It's supposed to ship Feb. 20th. Cost: $1,899.00 USD Shipping: $91.66 USD Total: $1,990.66 USD

Quick Specs:

Build Area: X 300mm, Y 300mm, Z 350mm (which is over a cubic foot)
FootPrint: X 527mm, Y 590mm, Z 587mm
RAMPS Driver board running Marlin (with upgrade path to Smoothie... soon hopefully)
External LCD w/click wheel controller, SD card slot, for PC independence
400W Kapton heater bed
Borosilicate print surface
Two 24V power supplies (one 17A for the heater and one 8-10A for everything else)
0.4mm nozzle Jhead MKV-b hot end and uses a hobbled pulley made by blddk
Custom extruder with true planetary gear head nema17 motor
PLA or ABS (plus nylon and other new materials)
Z axis is capable or 0.025mm or 25micrometer layer heights
+-0.02mm repeatability and resolution per meter of travel

The hardware is all open source. The files are on Thingiverse. There is a very active support group on Google Groups. Videos of the prototypes on YouTube.

Notes:

After a quick bit of research and forum scouting, it was obvious that Ezra Zygmuntowicz, who founded Trinity Labs, has extensive knowledge in this type of printer, and more importantly, was serious about supporting them and making the best printer one could for the $2k price range. I loved the lead screw setup over belts, and the build size and speed of this printer is hard to beat for the price, build quality, and completeness of the Aluminatus. When it comes down to it, his enthusiasm and willingness to "make things right" on the groups and forums sold me immediately and I got in on the second batch order after only a few hours research. There seem to be LOTS of issues with the MakerBots and the forums are too full of newbs like me. And of the few others I considered, the Aluminatus has them beat in most factors.

I'd swore I wouldn't plunge into 3D printing until the DLP or Stereolithography style printers were more mainstream and affordable, ala the FormOne, but until that company and all it's issues are worked out, I'll stick to the tried and true FDM style for a year or so just to get going and see if it's something I want to pursue. I'd seen the bad quality and amount of time it took just to get the printer working much less to print anything worth saving, and decided the time investment wasn't worth it yet, but it seems the software and hardware are finally to a point that I can tolerate the time-sink. At least at this price point. Any other DIY or $500-$1000 printer you're looking at a lot of setup and figuring. We shall see!

Supplies:

Along with the printer I ordered some filament from Trinity Labs to ship with the printer:

1x Filament - ABS - 3mm - ABS 1lb Coil - Safety Orange for $18.50 each
1x Filament - ABS - 3mm - ABS 1lb Coil - White for $18.50 each
1x Black Satin Filament - PLA - 2lb for $38.50 each

I also ordered some 618 Nylon fillament from Taulman 3D:

2x 1lb 3mm spools $39.50 plus shipping $10.85, Total = $50.35

I ordered a set of ball head metric allen keys to aid with construction of the Aluminatus (ball heads were recommended by a couple of guys who've already built theirs) from Amazon:

TEKTON 25220 Long Arm Ball Hex Key Wrench Set, Metric, 13-Piece

And to help with bed leveling, I ordered a cheapo dial indicator from eBay:

1" Dial Indicator made by Shars

And to check print bed and hot-end temps... I ordered an IR Thermometer from Amazon:

BAFX Products - Non Contact - Infrared (IR) Thermometer (-58F - +1,022F!)

Posted on February 12, 2013 by loren cox and filed under 3D Printing and tagged 3D printing Aluminatus TrinityOne Aluminatus.