Laser Cutting with a 3D Printer 

Well done and nicely explained! The cost of your laser module is similar to the cost of the 3-D printhead it replaces, so it makes good sense to borrow the printer to drive it for testing purposes. I appreciate the detail you provided to connecting, configuring, testing, and generating your test plots. A to Z coverage is often missing in some how-to videos, but you covered it all! Thank you for the inspiration.

This is great mate, doing my own 2020 framed 3d printer. I think ill be adding a laser module soon after completing the build. Cheers!

I love the idea of the last cutting option! To deal with smoke, I would suggest converting something like an airbrush compressor into a vacuum pump to pull away smoke. Lots of tutorials on how to do it online. Thanks for all the great content!

+1 on adjusting the z height with each pass to keep the focal length the same and +1 on some air assist as the smoke will reduce the lasers power. With both mods you'd cut through in less passes.

Thank you, you helped me a lot when it showed how to calibrate the laser.

The imagination of this project is going to infinity! Nice!

Good progress, thanks for testing this. - Eddy

Really well explained! Great video ... want to see more.

To funny. I just got my 2.5W laser out that I have had for a while now. First time using it. Video going up shortly cutting solder paste masks. Its the same one you got. I found that it focuses better closer. Around 20-30mm. Any more and the beam speeds to much. Also if you move the bed up with each pass you will cut the wood faster. Best of luck. Thanks for sharing. PS. Yes. Cut out side. :) ~Russ

Great stuff mate. Might have to change the name to MultiCube or something haha. I was looking to buy a laser cutter but now I can just add it to my HyperCube. AWESOME!!

Great video. Best I've seen on using a laser.

Great introduction to laser printing with an 3d printer! Thank you! One question. How hot gets the Laser module on the heatsink housing during a longer use?

you can add a mechanical endstop to the laser to home the Z, as the laser never needs to be hitting the bed or print like a nozzle

Great work. Thanks

Good day: I want to know if it is compatible with the "FlatCam 8.5" software or some version of it. Thank you Best regards

adjust the Z axis after each pass so the focus point is going further down. at this thickness plywood the bottom focus point is not optimal anymore. or put the laser further away making the beam angle narrower, which means you got a longer distance where the focus point is at its best size

Probably a good idea to have some sort of ventilation system to suck/blow smoke away from the laser, or else you might risk sooth accumulating on the lens and eventually blocking enough light that you damage the lens itself with the heat.

thankyou mate this was very enlightening for me...

How do you decide how many passes you have to give it to cut through? Trial and error?

Hi i wonder if this diode can cut an acrylic sheet.. do you have any idea if it possible?

I love it, very nice job. Do you will do a test over metal for engraving??

Really nice vid! I am gonna turn my old 3D printer into a laser engraver!

great,you got my interest, nice video

how about cutting acrylic sheet ? is this powerful enough ?

That's the type of glasses I've got with my 500mW laser. My 2500mW was supplied with a much darker one. You might want to verify if your glasses are sufficient for your 2500mW.

clean cut

Two things 1) To prevent the scorching just add some masking tape on top of the plywood 2) Did you think about designing an enclosure for the hypercube? That would be the best for ventilation of all those nasty laser fumes

Hi, did you measure the current of the laser? My 2.5W laser has a current of 0.9A which killed my transistor on my Trigorilla board..... My laser is not shown any TTL input, but there is a little main board in the printer.

Hi, this is awesome content ! I am really tempted to build myself a Hypercube platform to replace my replikeo prusa i3. The only thing that worries me with your design is the cantilevered bed. How does it hold up for printing ? Have you had any problem with it ? Vibration ? Play ? Lack of precision on the far end of the bed ? Thanks, keep up with the great content ;)

What happens if you increase the mm/s rate? Are you adjusting the height on each pass to stay at 50mm from the surface being cut?

I want to make a similar setup with different printer. One additional precaution I plan to do is transparent shroud (idealy one that would block light from the laser) that is around laser and goes very close to the surface, so that I don't get blind if I accidantally forget my goggles. At the same time - small fan with hepa filter on that shroud can filter fumes from burned surface

You, sir, are awesome. Good day.

Did you change the bed height after every or every few passes to focus the LASER to a deeper point in Plywood?

Amazing !!

Thanks, it was interesting. Have you tried engraving metal? Maybe its power is enough for marking metal without pastes?

Is it safe to connect this in place of the fan? I mean i have a wanhao i3 and im not sure if the fan driver is has enough output to supply 2,5 amps. Also how are you telling the cam software what command to use for the cut? If i want to connect perhaps to the heating element connections (since that has to have enough current) what do i have to change? Do i need to fiddle with the firmware? That i think is a no go on this printer.

Could you replace the fan for an extractor for both 3d printing and laser cutting?

Could you use very high speeds and variable number of passes to carve 3d shapes?

Does the head go down a little each pass? ( I mean if not, the focussing is worse at the bottom of the cut and the gap bigger ).

This is great. Would it be possible to automate the homing process with something like a BL-Touch sensor? Also, for thicker materials would it be possible to lower the Z height after each pass by just enough so that, for thicker parts, your last pass is preformed with the focus point being on the bed surface instead of the surface of the part? This should help with the tougher material like plywood or thicker material like insulation foam i would think.

You might need to lower the X carriage a bit after each pass to keep the laser in focus. That might reduce the number of passes.

Could you add another stepper and have gcode tweak the laser focus for higher resolution in the Z axis? edit: Oh, you're just cutting, not carving; hm, would the focus make any difference for the thickness of the stuff you're cutting?

Is it possible to use a fiber optic cable to redirect beam from the laser module to a mount on the extruder assembly? The goal of this being that both systems are permanently mounted on the extruder assembly, with the laser module mounted somewhere on the frame of the printer.

If you want the laser performance to last you need another mini fan to blow out the smoke so the residue of that smoke won't impaired on the laser beam output if you don't blow air in the output focus lens that lens Will get covered with the smoke residue and destroy it so you need to blow air on the output lens and evacuate the smoke at the same time

Hi, am using your CPS file on an Anycubic MEGA. Unfortunately, after running the GCode, my machine is not taking any positioning commands, left will run to the right, Z-down is up. The GCode looks good bt it is not properly recognized. There are only positiv moves, no G1 X-10 or something, this will be converted to plus movement eve the code says -10 it is marching +10, same on X, Y and Z. After homing, all is fine till the end of th escript. Marlin 1.1.8, any Ideas Thanks in advance

that's so cool... when you cut that square out of the wood I was thinking scale it up quite a bit to make a door for a chicken to go out the coop... laser a hole for wire to make a hinge... could even make the hole chicken shaped, LOL

What type of 3D printer did you convert?

Nice video, does it cut 2mm acrylic sheets

I have a 10 watt laser without focusing you have to adjust a 4" scissor lift, was thinking of using my Anet A8 3d printer, I'm not very good with electronics, if I can get it to work do you think I will be able to engrave metal and acyclic?>

Hi, very good video. What can i do with a 500mW laser? Is it possible to cut thin wood with a lot more time?

Very interested in trying this. One question I am not seeing ever asked is about vapor and particulate accumulation or condensation on the output lens. Is this an issue? How quickly does it get contaminated and is there a reliable way to clean it properly when it happens? What which materials are the worst?

How do you keep the bed from crashing down when the power is cut from the stepper?

Would this be able to cut jeans or similar cloth? I'm currently looking into using laser cutting to be able to cut fabric in one pass. If you could give a quick test on an old pair of jeans or similar tutorial with your 2.5 watt laser, that'd be very much appreciated.

How did you prepare gcode and what firmware are you using?

Cool video, just found it. I have got a dual extruder delta printer waiting to be assembled, I also got a 0.5W 800nm laser to take the place of one of the extruders. Using a wooden cabinet plus a Raspberry Pi with camera running Octoprint, instead of the goggles. Of course I'm going to try burning some of that metal infused PLA filament (if it were to sinter it into a solid object, I wouldn't be disappointed either). I figured those lasers were probably too low powered to have any real chance of success, so I chose the lower powered 800nm laser as I guessed it'd be closer to the right wavelength, even if the 400nm ones were more powerful.

ive found a 15000mw 15w 450nm (Blu-ray) could this be used instead? Specifications: Laser Wavelength: 450nm (Blu-ray) Output Power: 15W Working Voltage: 12V DC Working Current: 5A Focal length: 16mm Focal length: can be adjusted Heat dissipation: Fan Driving Mode: External ACC constant current drive AC Adaptor Plug: US AC Adaptor Input Voltage: 100-240V Lens Material: Optical glass with coating Light Form: Dot, adjustable-focus Modulation: TTL PWM Control: Support

If anyone can help me out - Do (ebay) laser drivers with ttl option smooth out the output, or does ttl mean square wave dc? I'm asking if these drivers can be used for (infrared 940nm) communication, do these drivers turn diode on and off (in my case at 38kHz), or do they just filter that ttl modulation out, using it only for output power control?

Thank you very much for this video, and for the excellent explanation. I have been thinking for a while on modifying my 3D printer to do this, and your video is very reassuring. However, I have a simple question for you: Have you tried cutting some fabric with this laser?

As usual, absolutely brilliant work. You run rings around me. I wonder if this would be a useful way of cutting custom cutout spaces in thick foam to hold equipment (cameras, lenses, electronic equipment) in cases? Given that a typical piece of foam would be 100mm thick, you'd need to refocus your beam to 100mm height, and activate Z height. And, given that some foam is combustible, keep a close eye on the process. I suppose you could also cut pieces out of preformed carbon fiber sheets (available through BangGood and AliExpress) to make extremely light drone enclosures. I suppose I should get off my arse and learn Fusion360. It seems to be becoming the de-facto standard in the maker industry. Small correction - there are 256 steps, not 255. They are numbered 0 - 255, where 0 is typically off, or null. Zero is often ignored, but it, too, is a number - and a very important one, as it enables positional counting (the number 10 is interpreted as 1 unit of tens, plus no units of ones). The Romans didn't have the concept of Zero, which led to the need for inclusion of complex mathematical formulas, right inside the number itself, to calculate values in Roman Numerals. Lacking a Zero really screwed them up. The IBM executive golf course has 18 holes - numbered zero through 17. Just my soapbox thing - left over from my days writing assembler on the IBM 360 and Cyber 172 platforms, over 40 years ago. Not really important, I suppose. I really, really enjoy your channel. Keep on flogging away. >Charlie in Canada

the smoke will also cost some power at the focus point cause it shadows out the laser... so you get non exact cutting depth.

Did you test cutting Acrylic with this laser?

Nice video, I'm looking at doing this too. I've noticed that there are also fixed focus lasers, with the beautiful adjustability of a 3D printer why didn't you go with a fixed focus? I thought that there might be an optical advantage with a fixed focus but I can't find anything written about it. Anyone know?

are you going to put copper on there and etch pcbs?

is the laser module cooling fan connected to the ramps board as well?

hi how do you connect higher power laser head, do I connect the head the same way 2.52 is connecte and use a step up voltage converter to provide more power?

Will such a low powered laser diode cut acrylic? I would like to convert my cnc router to a laser cutter. Thought about buying the 5W version...

I sujest taking advantage of your Z axes and step down after every pass to lessen the scorching and minimize the number of passes.

Will this machine cut 3mm acrylic?

Hi. What software you are using for laser cutting?

I see this a bit of an old video, are you still using this, have a question. Can you do images (halftones) on acrylic with this type of setup?

If you add a "part cooling fan" style fan it will help you when you cut. It reduces the risk of something catching fire and blows away the burned wood so the laser can reach the uncut wood. If I turn off the air pump on the 100 Watt co2 laser in our fablab you have a fire in a few minutes ;-)

Great video, thank you so much. I have Mooz-2 3d printer (3x1) which already have a 250mW laser module, it's useless, and I wanna upgrade to the same 2500mW, how can I do it?! I can send to you the photos of the module and the board attached to it. I'll appreciate your feedback.

Hello from the future: I am just now getting interested in laser related hobbies. I had a thought from watching this video. If you are cutting certain depth material after focusing the beam, would it make sense to have the bed raise during each pass? The beam id focused to a fixed height but as the laser cuts deeper, it would seem to become less focused. In order to keep the maximum cutting edge as the laser is working, it might work better if the bed was adjusting allowing less passes of the laser. Just a thought if is possible to program the machine this way.

nice work. I have the exact same laser and eye protection. And the printer is Geeetech Prusa i3 A Pro 3D Printer All Aluminum. I got stock because I read from the internet that the fan is always on at full power. I made a support for the laser so I don't need to remove the printer head. But where to connect it? By the way did you try to draw a picture with the laser?

Now add a nozzle, an air pump and and a way to push that smoke out and.... you get yourself a neat cutter!

Have you tried cutting plastic like 1mm or 2mm HIPS sheets with that tiny laser?

what max speed this laser printer can reach?

What is the PCB? Ramps board?? Interesting video.

Each pass it lowers a little? Maybe the aluminium plate is stealing heat from the engraving part, maybe put something insulating between?

Is your laser still working? I read some reviews of laser modules from China that burn out after a few minutes of use. I want to make sure before I buy your recommended laser module from Banggood.

Thanks for putting that green glass over camera. I am glad i am not blind.

could get a plain cooper pcb , and paint it whole with marker and then cut the paint ,exposing cooper ? because the straight marker on pcb method is too inacurate for mine liking , and the point of the marker is too big .

Couple of thoughts... Microswitch bed levelling, to auto home then add offset in Z? How well would this work for cutting vinyl sticker sheet do you think? Perfect for cutting masking stickers, etc. Excellent as always, cheers.

Hey, how much watt lasse we need to cut akrilic 3mm ?

Just as an idea: since your mount is plastic you could use the mounting screws for the toolhead to provide the electrical connection. You might just need more than 4 screws (2 heater, 2 temp sensor, 2 fan, 2 part cooling fan, 3 for the height sensor if it is not on the backplate). For me this sounds doable.

What software are you using to communicate gcode to the printer?

Is there software that can generate code that changes the intensity of the beam dynamically. For example, if you want to engrave/etch and then cut.

Very cool! Please be careful with extra the fumes!

I have at least a hundred ideas to use this to sell some self made goods, thanks xD

Please i need the connection circuit thks

hi, can it cut the 3mm plexiglass?

hello, very good your video, I have a question, what program do you use? Thank you

Could you maybe test out MDF? They are also quite light.

Can you make a video how to propperly generate the needed gcode

What sofftware to setting?

This is fantastic work. How much is the 15 watt laser price please

what gcodes you used for the cut ?

You can just run it at parial power depending on needs correct?.....also were you using full power when cutting throught the wood?

Can it cut 3mm acrylic sheet?

how did you do multiple passes in fusion 360?