Laser Engraving For Front Panels

[13engrsapper]

I should note that when we are running the laser we have an air scavenger kind of thing running that grabs the fumes filters and pulls the air out of the room. If we did not have that, you would likely have severe breathing issues - just because it does not hurt the laser does not mean its good for living things.

DO NOT RUN LASERS WITHOUT VENTILATION

Also, make sure you have a fire alarm and extinguisher in the vicinity if you are doing unattended runs. I know of more than two shops that have burned down due to minor safety oversights. Goes for the CNC too.

If you are using a dust collection system for your CNC etc, make sure you are using different bins do collect the dusts, or thoroughly clean them out between runs... some dusts should not mix, and don't use vacuum with hot metal ships into a bin full of wood shavings...

safety first, and second

Finishing my coffee, then I will stop pestering you guys for the day, time to solder.

-Tony

 

[13engrsapper]

How do you make these rectangular boxes? Glued?

I see you have two bottles on the CNC. I suspect one is for coolant/lubricant; what's the other?
And I suspect you have a bigger one for spindle cooling...

Rectangular boxes:
We are going to bolt through (with one central bolt, or run 4-6 per face into the rectangular stock. There is clearance for #6 screws in there. The big ones will be for DI's in the studio - big/heavy enough he do not get dragged around, or stolen. The small ones are our new stomp box prototype cases. Catch is, we've decided not to do any stop boxes, so there is tons of that stuff in the way.

Machine:
The two bottles, one is coolant for the spindle - the big one, as you suspected. There is a thermometer on that. The smaller bottle is lubricant for mist - we have tried a number of types and largely settled up on two we liked. We seldom cut wood with this.

Hard Lessons:
We bent our extruded table on day 1 that came with the unit. So I bought a 1.5' x 3' chunk of one inch thick ATP-5, then machined a set of about sixty 3/4" deep holes, almost the same diameter and tapped them to take threaded stainless steel inserts. There is also a pocket machined where the work pallet sits, so I can hold a proper Kurt machinists vice on the table. It gets used regularly to hold small parts, along with sets of soft jaws. ATP-5 machines so nicely, its easily my favorite material to machine.

 

[13engrsapper]

that's exactly my point, perception is biased at this wavelength, and the camera show how it saturate.

Cheers
Zam

The human eye auto-white balances and adjusts to intensity - you get fooled. I have a commercial photography background, and had to learn a bit about light and filters. I was surprised then the laser I had purchased came with glasses not correct for the wavelength... not totally ineffective, just not what should have been used to properly do the job.

I forgot to mention eye protection - Even though our CNC is enclosed, every time we open it it is done with goggles on and a mask - while we clean up the table and pull parts. I plan on enclosing our laser like our CNC is, I will use a translucent acrylic in a light filtering color to encase it. Eye protection will still be needed, as to not break our "Haus" rules...

There is also a warning on the shop door we fold down when the laser is running. Sorry I don't know how to rotate an uploaded image. You get the point.

It's hard to build stuff without eyes or lungs.

 

[sr1200]

Did you work out what the break even point is for you vs. having someone like Front Panel Express or ProtoCase make the front panels for you?

My break point was the ridiculous price increase and wait time i experienced with FPE. No amount of $ is worth dealing with that. It set me back months on a project. The laser was under $1000 (well under). So thats probably less than 10 panels and im at break even financially. Plus, my kid is making key chains with wood on it and having a blast doing it, so its serving a purpose beyond that.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

its serving a purpose beyond that.

I had some doubts when I considered buying a CNC. Although it took several months to have the machine working, due to poor communication with the manufacturer, I ended up making much more things than I had anticipated. The excitement of mastering a new toy (and two pieces of software) is a welcome addition.
Same with the 3D printer.
The only thing to be aware of is the "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" syndrome, but it doesn't last long.

 

[chilidawg]

3D printer is awesome. Most of the enclosures that I made recently are 3D printed. I don't have to deal with sheet bending and pressing nuts into the sheet anymore. Just drop in some brass inserts for screws and you're good to go. If you print them at 100%, it's pretty durable and strong. The only downside is the heat tolerance, especially PLA
Not long ago I made a custom enclosure for my Intel NUC from PLA. I printed a bracket to mount a 2.5" HDD/SSD, and boy that was a bad move. The bracket deformed severely due to the heat that's not dissipated quickly from inside the enclosure combined with the heat coming from the SSD memory chips when the disk is under heavy load.

 

[13engrsapper]

I am so tempted to get a 3D printer, but I have my hands full with the laser and CNC.

 

[13engrsapper]

FWIW, and back to laser safety, here is a nice chart of safety glasses/goggles and their optical density at specific wavelengths:
https://www.phillips-safety.com/pro...kiau2Q1oQeBQex1PYrwa_IkAjZyWlIrEaAgYdEALw_wcB

 

[13engrsapper]

I want to see how my friends CO2 laser performs on this etching task - I am told it will burn though our polyester based powder coating much better than a laser. BUT...We like the subtle effect. I may have to try it both ways and decide.

 

[13engrsapper]

I guess since I am being nice and sharing some of our limited knowledge, I should share this. It is a link that will tell you material by material which lasers preform best and why:

https://www.ulsinc.com/material/materials-library
They claim it is an ever evolving source of information about what can be done with lasers. It might be worth making it a sticky somewhere related to laser use here. I have used it regularly and find it quite handy.

 

[13engrsapper]

Some very early tests with defocusing the laser, a couple/few years ago. Done on an old die cast aluminum stomp box back that had been powder coated. It is a polyester based powder coat. This was done on a cheap ortur diode laser.

 

[Ivan K.]

For Powdercoat paints, you can't beat the selection and service at Prismatic Powders (prismaticpowders.com)

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Is there anyone doing DIY powder coat?

 

[Gold]

Is there anyone doing DIY powder coat?

I bought a kit over 10 years ago. I never used it. It would be just about impossible to do in my location. To do it legally in NYC you need a spray booth. I doubt I could get away with even infrequent use.

 

[13engrsapper]

My powder coat guy treats me so well I am not even tempted. Most everything else we do in-house.

I have seen kits at places like Tractor supply, northern tool, or harbor freight here In the US.

A big part of good results is good prep, those guys have tanks of nasty stuff to get it done right and fast - this I will leave to them. I brought them an old rusty RCA OP-6 chassis that looked like it was pulled from the wreckage of a civil war era submarine. He just looked at it and said, no problem. I love that about him.

 

[jcamilo]

Is there anyone doing DIY powder coat?

Been doing it now for 5 or 6 years, with great results, built me an oven fits 2 x 2 x 4, and I've cooked hundreds of parts, it's all in the prep work.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Been doing it now for 5 or 6 years, with great results, built me an oven fits 2 x 2 x 4, and I've cooked hundreds of parts, it's all in the prep work.

I've seen the Eastwood demo, they do it in the workshop. I thought it was necessary to have a semi-enclosed space. Isn"t there a significant quantity of powder to gets wasted and ends up dirtying everything?

 

[jcamilo]

I've seen the Eastwood demo, they do it in the workshop. I thought it was necessary to have a semi-enclosed space. Isn"t there a significant quantity of powder to gets wasted and ends up dirtying everything?

I used a metal shelf which I only put the top, middle and bottom shelves and covered the back and sides with thin plywood, bought four $12.00 dollar square fans cut out the rear panel and put them sucking towards the rear, works perfect, even without the fans there isn't powder going all over the place it's a pretty controllable soft stream of powder that is attracted to the part, very little waste. added A/C filters in the front and havent had to replace in a few years.

 

[13engrsapper]

We thought about doing our own too, but like I said, our powder coat guy treats us well. I have a hard time getting him to take money from us. He is into music, and spends most of his days making stuff battleship grey for the Naval post here. So anything different is fun, especially music stuff. His stuff withstood my biz partners durability tests. If yours a polyester based powder?

We buy our own powder and store it here.

 

[13engrsapper]

Hey, I did a search but found nothing, and while we are on the topic of lasers and faceplates.

We are a bit frustrated with the lasers run times. Ours was a stock Ortur at one point, the brains still are and they are not smart.

The machine runs like an old dot matrix printer, if there is not a way to make them run like a CNC does (just go where there is cuts and stay in the cut), I am going to convert ours to g-code.

I know this will create other issues, like laser duty cycle will be nearly 100% now instead of much less, etc.

Anyone have experience here? I know some guys have lasers attached to their CNC... Maybe they can chime in.

-Tony