Hi, newish guy here.
I’m fairly recently retired but while I was working I had an Epilog Helix machine in my office at work (I was a university lecturer in the UK). It was probably the only thing I missed when I retired!
Last year I bought a k40. It’s great but a bit ‘clunky’ & it’s in my garage. This thing isn’t something you’d want in your living room(?). My garage is very cold & a bit cluttered so the k40 hasn’t seen a great deal of use.
In my academic career I’d used quite a few very powerful laser diodes. Ten years ago these things were mega expensive! I’ve watched with amusement as the cost of these has fallen & fallen, to the point that I had to ‘audition’ a LED engraver!
I shelled out the princely sum of £103 on a ‘Vevor’ 50x60 machine with a half watt laser. I can’t recommend this machine to anyone who hasn’t assembled something similar! It doesn’t help that half of the nuts & bolts were missing, yet I was left with a completely random pile of bits that didn’t belong at all!
All said & done, I’m very impressed with it. It’s quite something for the price of filling my car with fuel…
I’m much more familiar with CO2 lasers so I have quite a learning curve here. I started with Lasergrbl which is great for free software but it’s a bit limited. I’d heard a lot of good stories about Lightburn & here I am! I’m loving it so far!
So, after all that I DO have a couple of questions for you people:
- My half watt laser isn’t very useful. A 5W unit would probably suit me. Rather than buying randomly on the web I’m looking for recommendations. Remember I’m in the UK.
- I’d like to make my k40 work with Lightburn. I’ve seen some stupidly expensive solutions to this. I’m currently drawn to the MKS DLC32 but I’m not encouraged by the iffy youtube videos I’ve watched.
Cheers
Ian