40W Chinese Laser - Engrave and Cut Leather - Discuss

[JerseyFirefighter]

On 10/24/2017 at 1:55 AM, LatigoAmigo said:

Any updates to this adventure in laser cutting and engraving? I've been on the edge of my seat waiting to see something happen!

I haven't cut a bunch of stuff but I have been finding some decent ways to utilize the engraving portion of it. Ive made more $ selling drinkware for the time being but I really love the idea of cutting and engraving holster patterns. I went a little crazy and bought a USA made 50W. So far so good. The biggest headache by far is trial and error with the speed and power settings to get the desired effect you want on different media. 

[OLDNSLOW]

That American made must be sweet it is what a Chinese tries to be, I bought mine to be able to engrave leather as well, logo's etc,  The Chinese are sort of hit and miss as to how they come out of the factory, I was reading on the K40 google site this morning that someone received one without the software disk.  On the site I just mentioned you can find a lot of info of the imported one's you can also find many other sites from there that share images already made and can be downloaded and used either free or minimal cost, that can be used on leather and maybe add to another product line the options can be endless.

[LatigoAmigo]

Thought I would show you what a Chinese laser (in this case a 100-watt) could do. It has taken me a while to get the swing of it, i.e., beam alignment, focal adjustment, and more. So, after many YouTube videos, a class at a local maker-space and a test of my patience, I am very happy with the results, and am willing to share anything that I've learned in the process. 

[Benny]

Great thread guys I'm thinking about getting one. 

 

May have to jump in

 

 

[Wedgetail]

I blew mine up... hot tip, pay attention and make sure you have the aquarium pump on. Lol

Got to replace the laser tube now, which will be a bit pricey, but otherwise easy to do... should be all OK.

Actually tempted to just upgrade to a bigger one and keep it for spare parts.

The number of times I needed a template juuuuuust a touch bigger than the cutting deck size.

[Rockoboy]

4 hours ago, Wedgetail said:

number of times I needed a template juuuuuust a touch bigger

I know what you mean. A friend of mine has a 500mm X 700mm cut bed, but a design he was working on last week ended up being 460mm X 720mm.

[Wedgetail]

3 hours ago, Rockoboy said:

I know what you mean. A friend of mine has a 500mm X 700mm cut bed, but a design he was working on last week ended up being 460mm X 720mm.

Haha, exactly.

[3DReefer]

OK so.. first off check out newer machines not the same that you have been waiting 4+ years to pull the trigger on. For example the glowforge and a large number of the machines within the beginner market are only 40w, which with proper focus and speed control will happily slice thru 7-9 oz leather, let alone any engraving desires. The tech has came a long way in even the recent year and most of your worries have been updated by even the cheapest of chinese companies. Water temp should never be felt by hand anyhow (what is that accurately going to tell you?? Use a digital probe). Also with the speed at which your work will be getting cut it wont even have time to heat up the water cooling system even. 

Yes it smells, ALL lasers cuts should be done with proper filtration/ventilation in place and turned on. Your literally burning flesh, it will smell as such, but isnt intolerable either. I know many leather workers that use lasers daily in their work, many of which (including myself) stream live on twitch quite often and can answer any questions you may have. 

On the software side anything that will create an svg image can be used for most laser cutters. Be it corel draw, inkscape, etc, so dont think Mac uses are left out at all. 99% of lasers use an svg file for the tool path generation. Although some may require a secondary program to create the gcode, but that can easily be found also with a few minutes of google. Inkscape has laser plugins to generate gcode for example. 

[Wizcrafts]

Paintshop Pro can import, export and save files in SVG format.

[chuckgaudette]

I have the small hobby laser from Boss Laser https://www.bosslaser.com/boss-ls-1416.html

65 Watt. It's a good machine. I bought it to cut leather but found it's better for engraving. Of course, the bed is often not quite big enough. It does have pass-through doors on all 4 sides which helps. I'll attach a couple of examples