Re: laser cnc

I am not an expert by I have been reading up on home CNC laser. If
you don't just find a laser and most people won't then the simplest
type to build is a CO2 laser. There are two basic types to worry
about, sealed and flowing gas. The latter is the easier to make
from scratch, the former would normally be bought or at least the
tube would.

Rather than preach on a subject I know little about I will let you
read from Sam's FAQs. The main site seems a bit funny at the moment
but this mirror works:

http://straylight.cso.niu.edu/repairfaq/sam/lasercc2.htm

Read till you bleed and you will have a pretty good idea of what can
be done.

I myself have bought plans for a 35W CO2 flowing gas laser from:

http://www.emissiontechnologies.com

I can recommend the plans and the price can even be put against a
kit if you decide to go down that route. He also does a CNC
system. The laser contruction does not require glass blowing and
only really needs a little bit of lathe work and a bit of telephone
time locating pyrex tubing. The power supply is neon sign
transformer based and definately the most dangerous part of the
operation.

As far as what you can cut then I think you should rule out metal on
a first machine, there is too much to learn. The 35W unit should
cut plastic wood etc with no problems and pretty quick. Sam's FAQ
page has a bit on what can be cut etc.

As for the machine, belt driven gantry seems sensible as per the
emmisiontech machine, steppers should be pretty fast. I think you
need to have constant velocity type control as per Mach2 (I am not
sure on this). Servos would be an added bonus.

That's all I can think of right now

Cheers,

Graham

p.s. One thing to mention, you need special optics as normal glass
does not pass IR at 10.6um. These guys seem good and quite cheap:
http://laserresearch.net/