MrPaul
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I believe that McMaster also ships internationally if you have a hard time finding sourcing parts locally. Granted you would still have to order imperial parts but… if all else fails. If you needed help getting the bearing and or steppers shipped I would be happy to act as a middle man if needed. In any case good luck!
Nice Work!
As I’ve had tremendous issues cutting the Baltic Birch Ply on the laser I have access to I was tempted to try MDF instead. Have you had any issues with the cut surfaces degrading or flaking?
Personally I’ve always wondered about using a Parallel Port Adapter in an Express Card slot on a laptop. As some of the adapters connect directly to the PCI Express bus I believe that latency wouldn’t be an issue. Having said that I haven’t looked at the Mach 3 software site, and therefore did not realize that power saving features could pose a problem. I am curious if disabling the power management features from within the OS would solve that problem. Just because Mach3 does not officially support it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. When I get my machine up and running I’ll have to give it a shot.
Interestingly enough I used to own an IT firm and we built (or rather integrated bare-bone laptop enclosures) very powerful laptops for medical imaging applications. I still have a couple of them sitting around. The thing that made these laptops so interesting is that they used a desktop processor, and a motherboard with a desktop chipset and architecture. They were huge 12 lb monsters. I wonder if power saving features would be an issue here as they weren’t using chips designed to be run off a battery. Hell they only lasted 20 minutes on a huge battery. I guess I’ll have to give that a shot too.
@ Bill I tried the WoodCraft Ply with the settings you suggested, 3 passes and still 30% un-cut. I think the 60W laser is coming in today I’ll give that a shot.
I tried masonite yesterday as well. I maxed out the laser and it just burned up, had to stop the machine to prevent damaging it and to prevent a large fire.
I also tried solid birch panels. They are very expensive but they came out awesome looking. Problem is that they are not available in the sizes needed for most of the parts. Oh well.
Still hoping to hear back from some local companies re quotes. Damn I should probably just start a build log somewhere.
Thanx all for the suggestions.
@Bill: Yes it was at TS. And I used 1,2, and 5 passes at 90%, 5 speed at a variety of frequencies. There was just too many spots left uncut (any many of them long sections) to use a knife. I did focus half way down as well. I ended up getting the ply from a place in SF instead of WoodCraft, but it was very high quality. Maybe I should give the hard board a try like the designers originally used. Care to e-mail me the name of the place that you used to cut your over-sized parts?
The other option would be to use Acrylic which I know I could cut, but I am a little worried about the fragility of it, and of the fact that acrylic has little to no give. Being sturdy is important, but I would be worried that the acrylic may be prone to cracking and or fracturing unlike the ply which would have at least a small amount of give.
Bill,
My apologies if this is off topic. I am also a member at techshop. I am wondering if you cut the parts on the Helix laser there? Did you have any issues with it? Also I was thinking about using the Baltic Birch plywood too, did that work out? Feel free to contact me here, or via dysphoricpaul at mac dot com
It might be fun to see what you’ve got done so far, if you’re around some time.
Thanx
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