I now have in my possession a 2kw air cooled welder/cutter/cleaner (Scotle 2kw), a chonky galvo (SCANLAB hurrySCAN 25), a ~kw chiller and too much time on my hands. This thread is to document my complete and thorough violation of the warranty of the Scotle to do things it isn’t designed to do.
Phase 1: Documenting the internals of the Scotle.
It’s pretty much a RLaser F16 juiced up to ~1900w (I paid for 2000W damnit!) hooked up to a SUP23F system, with a couple of gas valves. Pics will follow. The SUP23F is reasonably well documented. Looks like I can just disconnect the Laser enable and PWM and hook it up to a spare JCZ board. The QBH connection to the SUP23F gun is the standard fare, which allows a direct connection to the hurrySCAN.
Phase 2, prepping the hurrySCAN
Currently getting together the plumbing for the water cooling for the collimating optics and main body of the hurrySCAN. It’s an eBay special, hence has some modifications from the previous owner. I’ll likely re-commision the mirror chamber gas line and pump some ~2 bar nitrogen through it, helping to keep the moisture down, and the everso slightly lower density of Nitrogen vs Air shouldn’t have detrimental effects. A friendly camera repair person has volunteered to perform a thorough clean of the optics.
Phase 3: Frame/Enclosure.
The hurryScan is, as previously described, chonky. Estimating at 35lbs with optics. 2kW is a lot of instant blindness to contain. instead of building a reasonably sized enclosure, I’m dedicating a 8ft x 8xt room to it, with solid concrete walls and dedicated ventilation. Door interlocks will be wired in to the safety chain, with a big old red button or 2 on the inside and outside of the room. The included pair of cheap safety goggles will be repurposed as a camera filter for the imaging system, as I have zero confidence in them for eye protection. Thorlabs glasses are a little pricy, but instant blindness is immeasurably more expensive! For the mounting of the hurrySCAN, I’m still torn between static mounting the galvo and moving the work in Z, or vice versa. I also have a WSX cutting head that will be mounted to an XYZ gantry thet I’m assembling, but I think the weight of the galvo is too much. All sorts of ideas about counterweighting etc, but need to ruminate on it further.
Phase 4: Not burning down my workshop.
First tests, at <10% power to dial in the monster. Looking at about 3 week timeframe to get here.
Watch this space!