Can anyone recommend a reliable 40W laser diode module?
I like the idea of moving to a powerful diode laser over the hassle of my CO2 laser. The 40W diode laser cutters on the market (xTool, Falcon2, etc) seem to do what I want nicely.
But rather than buying a whole machine, I assume it would make sense to buy a laser module on its own, given I already have a CNC router and laser cutter.
It would need to work with Lightburn and one of my existing machines (either an original X-Carve, or a generic laser cutter upgraded with a Ruida RDC6445).
so your looking to just swap the head out on the laser cutter your using now? will your current controller handle the power draw? and how’s it communicate? I have a falcon 2 40watt, and I can tell you I love it, a lot. I have a different 40watt head that I had planned on putting on my 10 watt home-made cutter, but I ended up biting the bullet, when the falcon popped up while I was looking into what I needed to do to make the head work. someday I’ll try making a Arduino controlled laser CNC with the head, I can’t really say if it’s any good or not, but it was pretty cheap, and it looks well built. I’ll dig it out and see what it is.
Everything being the same, they should have similar results… Meaning absorption rate of the material at both frequencies, spot size…
Other than one being digital and the other being analog…
There are a bunch of these 40W modules out there… there is also the Atomstack A7, 70W with 14 diode lasers. Didn’t see the module cost separately, but it’s likely available somewhere.
The lowest cost most flexible is probably an MKS DLC32 32 bit controller. It’s grbl based. I’m trying to get FluidNC to load on mine …
The Ruida will work for it also, but you have to pay more dollars for the dsp license from Lightburn…