[Things]

Welp, my new baby landed today

Was a little bigger than I expected, the crate only just fitting in my car by a few cm! And it's still quite heavy, still a 2 person lift, but not nearly as bad as before



Was glad it came with an actual DSP rather than some "fake" DSP's I've seen other companies use on their machine, replacing the LCD display with a laser current meter instead of an actual display. I may end up upgrading it to one from Lightobject in the future, as the software is a little clunky, but it works fine for now.



In general I'm quite happy with it, especially for the price, can't really beat it. Were a few minor issues as you'd expect, like the water flow sensor has broken off it's welds, bottom of the emergency switch fallen off etc, but apart from that, not really any other issues so far.

Alignment was pretty good right from the box, only had to remove the ZnSe lens and clean a bit of burnt material off it that had obviously fallen in there during their aligning.

First thing to go will be the flat cutting table, it's already a mess from cutting wood and I've only had it for 5 hours!



Laser tube arrived intact, which is great. Not 100% sure how you're meant to adjust the tube height on those mounts however, but haven't had to yet.



The manual Z axis is a bit tedious, takes quite a while to move it to the full extents, but I intend on making this motor driven in the future too, shouldn't be too difficult.

It has an inbuilt exhaust fan, which isn't all that powerful, however it is sufficient, even with the extended tube.



It also comes with a rotary axis, which could really do with some rubber around the rollers, but that's pretty easy to add myself.



Basically came with everything needed to get up and running. Living in the tropics though, I'm using an aquarium water chiller to hold the lasers water at around 22C. I'd like to go lower, but condensation is an issue right now in the summer, it's disgusting, hot and humid The 10.6um wavelength being absorbed by water, the last thing I want is water getting on the output lens of the tube and cracking it!

Few little odds n ends I've done so far



Have done my first few modifications, simply installing some LED strip. The fluoro is nice and bright, but it gets blocked by the X axis, so I put some at the front of the machine, as well as under the X axis itself:







Things I'm planning on doing when money permits:

Replace red laser attachment with a proper ZnSe combining lens, as at the moment it's practically useless.
Install a relay for the air pump so it only comes on when a job is running. It has a manual switch on the side of the unit, however it gets quite hot if left on for a period of time, and I've heard a few stories of these burning out.
Replace the cutting bed with eggcrate - this flat sheet is already a mess from cutting wood, and is basically hopeless on acrylic from reflections.

I'm gonna pick up some gangnails tomorrow and try them upside down until I can afford the eggcrate, see how that does

[Things]

Thought I'd just follow up to this, earlier in the thread there was mention that after sale support would be non-existent, and I'm happy to say this so far hasn't been the case for me. I've been asking the seller questions constantly after the sale, and always get a reply within 12 hours excluding weekends. While the seller does not actually have anything to do with the manufacturing of the machines, it appear he does have contact with the "technicians". English is a bit broken as you'd expect, but in general he's been quite helpful after the sale, and even offered to replace the exhaust fan which was a bit rattly.



I have since ripped out the flat cutting table, and have some aluminium eggcrate on the way to replace it. I've also installed an inline red aiming laser thanks to Bec Weir, it's a great help minimizing waste material.



The optic is a bit of a pain in the ass to adjust in that configuration, but only took around 2 hours or so to get it all aligned.

So yes, quite happy that the seller has been content in answering questions after the sale. Although I do have a fair technical background in this stuff, it's nice having contact with the manufacturer behind you, and so far the machine has been great.

EDIT: Eggcrate arrived today

Seeing as I got a scrap piece free, I had to cut it down to size to make it fit my machine. What was handy is it came with an outer frame that had risers attached, so it actually sits above the surface of the table a bit, which is perfect. Took a bit of mangling to get the frame right, as I had to cut the longer sides off and use 2 pieces of it to make up the back of the frame, but it worked

[Bec Weir]

That all looks the goods!

Glad to see that beam combiner finally getting some use! Much better with you than sitting in my shed cupboard.

The only thing that I can see the egg crate causing problems, is the small cut parts falling through the holes. How to stop that is my next task to grapple with.

[Things]

Well, I do have the original plate base here, I was considering actually just attaching it underneath using magnets. Should be far enough down that reflections aren't an issue, and you can just pull it off the magnets to clean it out. Although the bottom of the machine is easily accessible through the front panel, so it's not a huge issue