I’ve recently received a Vevor 80w Co2 Laser from a friends friend who moved out of the country, since he knows i’m in the laser business. I don’t have an easy way to contact them. The person has done some mods to the laser unit such as changing the board to a smoothieboard and adding a swappable 3d printer head. The unit also had a Raspberry Pi installed in it in place of the LCD screen which is no longer in there (the LCD or the Pi) so there are some loose wires in the unit I have no idea what to do with.
I plugged the unit up and am able to access the laser via lightburn but nothing else works yet, the bed servos dont seem to do anything nor am i able to reposition the laser head.
I’m not sure what purpose the Pi served but I do have a few of them laying around here collecting dust. Will it help me if I install one? do I even need one at all or can i get by with direct USB access to the smoothieboard and nothing else?
I have not hooked up the water supply yet since I just wanted to make sure the bed works and the laser head servos and belts were all good.
I need some advice on what direction to go from here, i am not very familiar with the type of electronics inside of this laser but am not completely unfamiliar either if that makes sense.
I will attach a video of what is going on and hope someone can help in any way.
Also, is there any chance I would be able to find a local person who would be willing to come take a look ?
I click on the link and Google advises ‘You need access’. Set the protections and we’ll try again.
I’ve never seen a machine of this size use a smoothie board… Most of these have a dsp such as a Ruida in them.
Do you have a link to the machine?
This isn’t standard, but I’ve heard of machines using a PI for it’s brains running gbl… I actually have one that creates a wireless link to my Ruida, which is a faux 50W machine.
Are you sure it has a smoothieware board in it?
If you can’t find a link, take a couple photos … take a few photos anyway, inside and out
In the end, these work pretty simply, so I doubt you’ll have too much trouble getting it running. Would be nice to know what the PI was doing.
I’d check to ensure you’re getting proper voltages as a start.
Are you in the laser-using or laser-tinkering business? Your buddy was obviously a tinker.
I think you’re in the laser-using category, in which case you’ll devote a lot of otherwise money-making time to figuring out what’s going on inside that machine, replacing parts, and (maybe) bringing it back to life.
It looks like the OMTech 60 W red-n-black laser I have, right down to the stepper motor driver for the auto-focus Z axis. It would be straightforward to rip out all the gimcrackery, drop a suitable Ruida controller into the slot, wire everything up in a standard manner, configure the controller to match the hardware, then put the machine to good use.
However, because you’re starting from “not very familiar with the type of electronics inside of this laser”, you’re at the bottom of a very steep learning curve requiring considerable time to climb. Don’t kid yourself: this is not something you can accomplish with a few hours a week spread over a month or two, even with coaching from folks around here.
IMO you’d be better off selling that thing for parts and buying a new machine with known performance. Mine cost a bit over $3000 delivered, which isn’t cheap but also worked pretty much out of the box. There was a steep learning curve, but entirely devoted to learning how to use a laser, not how to (re)build one from scratch.
IMO, if you can’t justify dropping three kilobucks on a new CO₂ laser, then you can’t possibly justify the unbounded time & expense required to rebuild an old one.
I think it looks worse than it is. I’d pick up a Ruida, remove the Makers Space board. The setup is relatively easy. It really depends on, as @ednisley advised, is are you a user or tinkerer.
Excluding the controller, the machine and all of those parts not related to the controller are a substantial amount of the costs of a laser.
Most of the rats nest wiring he created looks more like he just connected to existing wires, not really damaging anything…
A decision you have to make… Might want to query is anyone is located near you that can assist you in wiring up a new controller…
This will probably work if you chase down the wiring and use what’s there.
Not working, it’s value is questionable, which is why you have it… Working, it has, comparably, substantial value…
You get to choose… We’ll help if you wish to pursue a getting this running.
