Look what we got! – NEW LASER CUTTER
A brand new
LASER CUTTER
- 80 watts of cutting power, capable of cutting up to 1″ in certain materials
- 39″ x 30″ (100cm x 80cm) bed, with the possibility to feed through larger pieces of material
- Driver type: Micro Stepping Motor
- Max speed: 1000mm/s
- Resolution: 2500 DPI
- Location precision: < 0.01mm
- air assist nozzle
- sight laser for easier alignment of cuts
- industrial water cooler and fume extraction system
- hackable and upgradeable…
I would like to thank all the members of the laser committee for taking part. It was a n excellent experience to be working with a great set of minds to make this happen. Specially, I would like to thank Richard and Behram for really stepping up and taking charge. Behram conducted a great deal of research and prevented us from buying a significantly overpriced laser. Richard was very diligent and coordinated the purchase and shipping of this laser at significant savings (over %50 of retail value).
Can it cut steel? Boy oh boy exciting!
Greetings from Calgary protospace!
Love your new toy – we have one very similar and it is a blast/really opens up a lot of hack options! If you are willing to share, we’d love to see your selection/proposal/criteria for when we get a replacement.
@RUSL: no, 80 watts is enough to cut virtually anything less dense than metal. Worse, infrared CO2 lasers don’t interfere on a molecular level with most metals to cause heat – it just reflects. You need a higher energy laser like UltraViolet YAG to cut metal.
More hellos from Calgary. We certainly enjoy our cutter, and it gets good use. It will not be long before yours garners the same level of affection and use!
I would like to pose some corrections.
80W is indeed enough to cut thin gauge steel (maybe 24 ga) if your laser is properly focused and you have an air assist nozzle. Furthermore, the statement that CO2 lasers do not work well on steel is false, I direct you to the multi-KW lasers that are used in Laser-fab shops (cutting steel up to 1″). C02 lasers produce IR light, which is effective on most materials (anything opaque, all glass and most plastics) UV lasers are predominantly used for two reasons, firstly, they do not cut glass so you can use a fiber optic delivery to the cutting head instead of flying optics. Secondly, they deliver extremely high energy pulses to produce very fine detail in engraving or cutting/hole making. However, these lasers cannot maintain high enough power to efficiently cut metals.
The laser in Calgary does not have an air assist nozzle, Does not have high quality optics to achieve the required level of focus and does not use a pulsed laser to take advantage of the transient start-up characteristics of a CO2 laser. (I am not positive on the last one, but I’m pretty sure)
100W is generally accepted as the minimum for steel cutting, but with patience and coaxing you can cut with 80. (you will have problems with aluminum and stainless) I hope that when the time comes to replace the Calgary laser, a more “balls to the wall” type approach will be taken. In the mean time it would be great if you could take the opportunity to experiment with your lasers and find out its true capabilities, beyond those listed in the owners manual. Remember, its not science if it doesn’t have warning stickers!