Laser Engraver

[martin.pearson]

+1 on what SkinnyB has just said, really doing some research is the best way especially as now you should have a better idea what you are looking for. You might well find that you end up buying a more expensive, more capable machine in the future, what often starts off as needing a machine for one task often grows arms & legs once you have been using it for a while. Especially when people start asking you to do things that you never thought about doing at the start lol

 

[akirk]

The one the OP posts above is I assume a CNC as well as Laser engraver - personally I would go for one machine to do one function - until you get to the commercial CNC which have a laser head on the side to personalise items they are cutting

The NEJE lasers are simply for engraving - arguably they can cut but not like a CNC

 

[martin.pearson]

What size are the items you want to be able to laser engrave? The working area of the one you linked to is pretty small which may cause you problems,
akirk makes a good point about having one machine for one function, if you bought separate machines then you could effectively have them both running at the same time doing different jobs. Really comes down to how much you can afford to invest & how much time you have.

 

[Andy]

You could see if there is a fab lab near you: Labs | FabLabs

If so, you may be able to get to use a laser engraver / cnc router for free or for a nominal fee. What is more, they will show you how to use it. I used one near me and got access to a powerful 8 x 4 cnc router and was given full training in its use.

You will then come away with a much better idea of what you need,

 

[MorrisWoodman12]

from the above discussion it appears that a lot of it is focused on the more expensive lasers...

Whereas I agree with @akirk I don't agree that you should buy the most powerful laser you can afford. The warnings given by @Craig22 are real even with low power lasers. There are reasons why BS/EN60825 (if my memory serves me correctly) limits visible lasers without some form of protection to less than 1mW. And watch out for specular reflections. And it all becomes more important if, like me and I guess many of us now, you have a lens in front of your eyes to refocus the beam to a tiny burning hot spot on your retina.
I'm not saying don't do it, just be very, very careful.
Martin

 

[Craig22]

Well, some of you seem hell bent on permanently damaging your eyesight, or that of any family member that inadvertently comes into your workshop. Or anyone walking past your workshop windows.

The Amazon CNC router with a 5.5W diode laser linked in a post above, and no primary safety whatever is a case in point. The goggles supplied have zero specification. They even do a version with a 15W laser diode!

Nowhere do they even say what the laser wavelength is.

Your call - don't say I didn't warn you.

https://www.lasersafetyfacts.com/4/https://www.lasersafetyfacts.com/laserclasses.html

 

[Johnny65]

Is there anyone near lowestoft that I can have a look at theirs please, within about 25 miles.

 

[paulrbarnard]

Good grief. This sort of behavior is hazardous beyond anything they remotely understand.

My original background was in laser development. Pulsed Nd:YAG. I once did the calculation that if you divided up a single 10ns pulse equally, there was enough to cause laser eye damage to the population of London.

Before we were let loose, we had to attend laser safety training, part of which was a video. One thing sticks in my mind - a war veteran who ended up doing laser research. He said nothing he experienced in active service compared remotely with the horror of looking at the world through his blood filled eyeball.

Then we had our retinas photographed - dilated pupils after drops - so that if any laser damage occurred there was a healthy reference against which to measure.

Those things did the job. It very soon became second nature to put on laser goggles before even switching the laser on. And all the lab doors were interlocked, with a flashing red light above the door. If the door was inadvertently opened, the laser shut off.

Now some of the laser diodes from Amazon come with a pair of "safety specs". Unspecified performance, but clearly cheap. Properly specified laser goggles for the wavelength of interest are about 100-150 or more (dollars, UKP, Euro - all similar now).

The 200x300 sheet of laser safe “glass” I bought to put in my laser enclosure code me £250, which was more than the diode laser itself. The enclosure door has interlock switches that kill the power to the laser if the door gets opened. Having seen what even a supposedly safe laser in a vehicle lidar unit can do to a camera sensor I didn’t want to take any chances.

 

[Essex Barn Workshop]

I have had a need for some items to be laser engraved, and used a hobbyist close to my workshop. He was running one of those £100ish chinese machines and did a good job. Recently, I wanted something else done but he was unavailable, so put an ad on a facebook group and visited a guy who had a £10,000 machine in his shed!
Results were comparable, but 5 times quicker. In our conversation i mentioned the hobbyist machine, and he said he'd started with one that cost him about £3-400 and I could buy it from him (seriously cheaply) and in addition he'd come to my workshop, set it up and give me a tutoirial.
This is what I now (as of yesterday) have in my workshop:

It is apparently a generic K40 and, as much as anything, great fun to use. I know there is a steep learning curve in front of me, but it seems like most of that is in the use of Inkscape and K40 whisperer, the 2 pieces of software he asked me to download and install.

 

[manicminer]

The Ortur diode laser engravers look like a good introduction and should do what you want to do for not much money
This review covers most aspects, from assembly, software to making stuff
Youtube link

 

[Essex Barn Workshop]

If you are interested in what these machines can do, this dog was the first thing I cut on my K40. Took a while! I should have deleted the background.

 

[Rich C]

I have a 3018 Chinese spec engraver. It's pretty bare bones but functional. Works with lightburn.

Diode is blue/violet visible spectrum.

I'm not blind yet.

Also does cnc routing which is pretty handy, I mostly use it for that.