CNC Laser Cutter

All documentation needed for making these upgrades can be downloaded here.

During summer I was thinking of a way to cut plasticized labels, the ones used for my devices. Idea was to use laser. Reading the internet I found that 0,3W Blue ray laser is enough to cut paper, so decided to buy Chinese 2.5W laser CNC and give it a try. It turned out it's a quite quality device, but it needed some additional work on it to become fully usable. I will start by showing cut made with it.

Snowflakes made from colored paper:

Some "roses" I draw in CAD:

This was intended purpose: plasticized labels for my devices:

It took me some time to find good working software, since BenBox which supplier reccomends is just a crap. First I draw cutting routes in CAD and save it as .dxf. Then dxf2gcode is used to generate gcode. In the end universal gcode sender is used to send cutting code to machine. Once it's calibrated everything works quite well.



This is how my heavily modified 2.5W laser cutter looks like:

There is vacuum plate for clamping labels to surface. Vacuum plate uses 6 PWM fans for making underpressure, and these fans are controlled with this small unit:

Printed labels need some positioning system to make cuts aligned with prints. For this purpose small laser pointer is added together with main laser head. This makes two points surface alignment system.
Also, near laser head there is small centrifugal fan, which is essential for blowing off fumes which disturbe laser beam and reduce it's power making it insufficient for cutting.

Video presentation: