Hi.

I am planning to use my C-Beam machine as a Laser cutter and I will most likely adopt your design ;-)
I will receive my Laser next week or so.

For the Laser equipment I can highly recommend J Tech / Products | J Tech Photonics, Inc. .
( Jay Johnson from J-Tech was the reason I am getting a Laser in the first place!! )

He also mentioned to be very careful with using any cheap powers supplies!!!
Quote (Jay):
-------------------------------
Yes we filter the input to the laser driver, but the cheap Chinese computer power supplies have no protection and put out over 20,000 volts (low current) at startup.
There is a 15% chance using these supplies that the spike is large enough and fast enough to go through both the soft start filter and the three high speed Zener diodes that are in the laser driver and the one in the laser itself.
While we have a lot of suppression techniques built into the laser driver, those supplies put out incredible voltage spikes and even the best protection can fail.
It is best to use the wall supply provided or a trusted 12V supply like ones used in professional CNC machines
---------------------------------
This could be very expensive to NOT to follow his advice.

By the way which controller are you using?
I am using CNC-Pro V2 for the C-Beam running GRBL 0.9i
I still have to check how to use it for the Laser...

Which software are you using?
I am looking for LaserWeb 2
GitHub - openhardwarecoza/LaserWeb2: Yip its time to start working on its successor already!

Thanks for sharing and best regards from Namibia
Jurgen

 

Hi.
I just wanted to report my on "laser - project" progress
I am using a CNC xPro V2 but I am now running the latest GRBL "edge" ( V1.0C)
This one has some additional settings and works fine as far as I can see.
Have a look here.
GitHub - grbl/grbl at edge

I also received a 3.8W Laser from J Tech (J Tech Photonics, Inc. ) .

As cooling can never to be too much, I designed my C-Beam laser-mount to be
1. fully enclosed to enforce the air flow exactly where is should be (i hope)
2. mounted the laser on an old pentium? CPU heat sink
3. and installed a 12V/80mm fan on top
maybe an overkill ;-)

I also added a simple mount for the "laser driver", have a look at the stl file
and the fusion 360
Unsupported Browser ~ A360

I only drew the heat-sink so I do not have a separate file.
The heat-sink size is ~52 x ~52mm (flat side) x 27mm(fins). This was a standard i486 cooler Iguess
I just drilled the wholes for the Laser and the mounting on the go and tapped them with M3 threads.

The Laser mount is also here:
Unsupported Browser ~ A360

In case you wonder why all the wholes are at the bottom:
I thought that I could maybe mount some laser-shield here.

There are also 2 wholes inside ( left and right of the laser).
The wholes are not straight down but at an angle!
The top diameter is around 5mm and at the bottom it is only 1mm.
Maybe this could be used to mount some 5mm LEDs and they should then mark where the laser-focus should be.
At least that was the idea - which I have not tested yet!

By the way, the whole laser mount prints (upside down) without any support!
That is why I chamfered most edges at a 45 degree angle - also to make a smoother air flow.
... and all the filet edges should make for a smoother printing - NO sharp turns for the printer ;-)

cheers ;-)