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Finishing building a homemade fiber laser machine...

arkcnc

Plastic
Joined
May 21, 2018
Hello everyone, I am new here...
And I really want to hear opinions / thoughts.

I been building all kinds of automation / numerical control machines for some time.
and I starter building a 700w fiber laser machine 3 week ago from scratch, and it is almost done.


I will be posting pictures and videos soon
 
See ans see zone dot com is the place for you

Please see the stickies up top of the cnc section concerning
your posting.
 
See ans see zone dot com is the place for you

Please see the stickies up top of the cnc section concerning
your posting.

Even if it is a production grade machine? If you are making a lot of sheet metal parts 700 watts is plenty to crank them out very quickly.

On our 2kW Mitsubishi I'm not aware of any cut conditions below 14 gauge that even call for more than 700 watts.
 
See ans see zone dot com is the place for you

Please see the stickies up top of the cnc section concerning
your posting.

If the dude pulls it off i think its pretty much fine here, 700W is a bit above and beyond most "Zone" wet dreams
 
If the dude pulls it off i think its pretty much fine here, 700W is a bit above and beyond most "Zone" wet dreams

It's not my call nor yours.

I'm simply pointing out the posted policies of the forum, so the OP might
keep from getting locked.
 
Price a 700W fibre laser, then realise its not hobby level shit, your talking a laser source costing well into 5 figures, it puts most power sources on industrial plasma cutters into home shop league if that's your price point.

If he can pull this off, then it may open the option of adding fibre laser to large existing gantery plasma and gas cutting, this is well into the pro grade equipment not harry home shop stuff doug. Remember, the bar was now set at Baleigh or better, this should easily top that level, hence let it go.

You want to police stuff, go after some of the crap about 10 thou or 1 thou being posted in general.
 
Let me put it this way....this is the level work motion guru does, and if he were to detail his work people would gauk and praise. The word "homemade" should not preclude a good post. Thus far though, no details are given.

This thread needs pics....and details.

What are you using for motion control? Where did you source the laser? Type?


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Im not sure any brand of greenhouse would offer safe suitable containment at typical wavelengths, on the plus side the added heat would no doubt help your tomatoes grow!
 
If you take some ~2" PVC pipe, cut some one foot lengths (and shorter pieces for the gap between the two pairs of linear bearings), then slice a "C" cut along the length, you can mount them on the pillow block ends to partially cover the exposed linear rail.

While not as good as a full bellows cover, at least you'll protect the rails from localized spatter from the cutting.
 
Hello, thanks for asking.

For ventilation, I am using (2) dayton 220v blower fans.

The safety interlocks... well I'm using a lot of safety switches;
(5) e-stop buttons (each corner and handheld),
(2) door switches (top and bottom),
(2) liquid flow sensors (diodes & head chillers),
(4) temp sensor (laser head, electronics, room and working area),
(5) moist sensors (to detect any potential water leaks),
(6) limit & home switches (x,y & z),
(1) laser head height sensor (magnetic),
(14) DC current and voltage sensors (for the diodes & servos, (10) diodes + (4) servos ),
(14) servo and diodes fault sensors (optic).
I am controlling all the sensors and switches with a micrologix plc + expansion i/o card.

and finally for eye protection, I build a whole sheet metal enclosure with a 3 plexiglass windows (organic dyed). and coherent fiber laser eye goggles

I going to upload videos, as soon I finish the machine. to my youtube channel: Ark Channel
Where I currently have 2 videos, of a CNC router (with single and dual head) That I design and build some time ago...
 
That looks about 20,000 lbs lighter than a real laser, but I'm very curious about the fiber laser hardware you are using.

I have a couple CO2 lasers and one is a few years past due for a res rebuild.
 
That looks about 20,000 lbs lighter than a real laser, but I'm very curious about the fiber laser hardware you are using.

I have a couple CO2 lasers and one is a few years past due for a res rebuild.

If you look at a modern 4kw class Mitsubishi fiber laser you will realise just how light weight all the head and slides really are, more than a few makes are using carbon fiber composites to get high strength rigidity and blazing fast accelerations low gantery mass gives you. nearly all there mass is in the table on commercial machines that are designed around handling 1/2 ton steel plates and shuttling them in - out fast. With a laser its got nothing to do with strength, cutting forces are in the single digit newton range, its all down to being able to move the beam around fast and very very smoothly.

kinda suprised your brave enough to risk pushing a resonator rebuild, its costly - really hard to clean up if much goes too wrong in there.

OP care to share roughly how much the diodes are?
 
Just as a reference, we recently took delivery of a chinese made 2kw laser machine with a table changer, I think I would rather have his home brew machine over that piece of garbage. $200K if I heard correctly, and I believe half of that is the 2kw IPG fiber unit. 3 months of fighting with it and I still can't get a clean cut in 10ga mild. Don't buy Chinese machines kids, you're gonna have a bad time...
 
Generally any class 4 laser in use must have an FDA registered design that functionally makes it into a class 1 device through proper guarding and safety interlocks. This is mostly accomplished with a scouts honor system, but the moment you or anyone else is injured on this thing, the honor system suddenly becomes a verification check and OSHA gets involved pretty quickly.

Unless of course it is a hobby machine in your garage or something of that nature. :)
 








 
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