The old coolant was completely removed and swapped with de-mineralised water many months ago. The old coolant did have an antimicrobial agent as well as anti-corrosion agent in it, but there were potential questions about its dielectric breakdown at high voltages. So just to eliminate the unknown of another potential variable for errors, we swapped back.
2 Likes
Btw, as some of you may have seen on the last few Tuesday nights the Laser Cutter is up and running again, thanks to a Smoothieboard and @Leon 's inkscape plugins.
Weāre currently working on induction materials to idiotproof usage of it but should be running inductions again soon. Also, anyone who was inducted on the previous hardware setup will need to be re-inducted.
5 Likes
Thankyou very much Nog.
Iāve updated my laser repos to fix some minor errors in displaying error messages about paths and also a bug for floating point precision for smoothie gcode generation (Select smoothie in advanced)
https://github.com/TurnkeyTyranny check out the repos.
I also finished off my rastering path optimisation code so it doesnāt have to scan over white space, ace! One step closer to porting this to Smoothie.
2 Likes
In case anyone is goign to use the laser, as of tonight its lenses were out of alignment again. Please donāt use it until someone realigns them.
1 Like
Itās back in alignment now.
There will be a sign going up shortly stressing how delicate the alignment is on the machine. Anyone leaning on the machine, closing the door too quickly, moving it around the room or nudging it will cause it to go out of alignment.
Given how much effort and time it takes to align this I will ask the executive to issue infractions for anyone who through willful ignorance causes it to go out of alignment from this point onwards. (Yes, this means excitedly opening and shutting the door, leaning on it, leaving things on top of it.)
Given the CNC routers are also in the next room I am investigating adding a āHazardous Machines in Useā warning light to the Fabrication Labās entrance and also a switched lockout so that members cannot walk into either room when either:
a) The laser cutter alignment is being corrected. I really really really donāt want anyone being injured by this thing.
b) The CNC routers are cutting harder materials than wood and so the bit may snap.
In less grumpy news, @Leon is amazing. Thank you for making your script work with the smoothieboard and for fixing the bugs we saw last night, as well as being around to help us muddle through them!
2 Likes
Is it possible to build some something to stop the vibration from the door from shaking the laser?
Are you locking the mirror nuts?
The only reason the alignment would be knocked so far out each time is if the screws arnāt locked after alignment completed.
Food for though.
Itās possible, Peter and Aaron have been doing the calibration currently so Iām not 100% sure.
I guess the next question is: Will it consistently run a job longer than
30 or 60 minutesā¦? that was the issue beforeā¦ after a while the
thing starts to appear to āloose powerā and whatnot, till it eventually
canāt barely cut anything at allā¦?
I found a thumb print on the first mirror last night
More necro postsā¦ ie old posts from the email queue t hat are coming thru weeks late.
Just published an update which you guys will like for the Inkscape exporter plugin - The plugin now supports having the origin at the top left so you can design things and have them print out in the same orientation as they appear in inkscape.
Find the new code here : https://github.com/TurnkeyTyranny/laser-gcode-exporter-inkscape-plugin
Anything that isnāt a path will export as a raster - though smoothie doesnāt support raster yet so keep that in mind. Select your objects and choose Path->Convert to path
2 Likes