Designed and printed an air assist nozzle for my laser cutter.

Comments

• BadMonkeyEdd@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Be careful with it.

  I have an Elegoo Phecda 10W which at the time you couldn’t get the air assist for. So I designed my own air assist (similar to yours).

  A test print caught fire (card), and this melted the air assist nozzle (PETG). This, in turn, covered the lens with PETG. While trying to clean it, I broke the glass protection. I now have a new air assist nozzle with an in built 20mm x 20mm glass slide cover to protect the laser. Not ideal, but Elegoo don’t have spares yet.

  happy cutting though!

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  • wjrii@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Good info. I'll need to make sure I keep an eye on it. Safety wise, I have a decent fire extinguisher nearby, a camera pointed at the laser, and never leave it unattended for more than a few minutes. Haven't had any flareups in a while, but I know it can happen if the motors stop and the laser doesn't. As for damaging the module, not that I want to, but there might be worse things in the world than needing to replace the 5-watt laser.

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• wjrii@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Most of the Air Assist nozzles for the Comgrow Z1 are specifically for the 10w focal length, not my little 5w, so I stole some concepts but designed my own. Press fit some magnets and hooked it up to an Aquarium air pump.

  3D model
  https://ibb.co/yPCZHdh

  Pulled off the laser for a better angle
  https://ibb.co/4sHL1bC

  Printed on my Voxelab Aquila in PLA. Designed in my 20-Euro copy of BeckerCAD 14 3D Pro (aka Caddy++ Basic, which they at least attempt to sell for 800 EUR), because I'm a cheap weirdo who wants a clear commercial-use license to maybe sell something someday, but FreeCAD hates joy.

  I gotta say though, as niche as BeckerCAD is, the vendor (who seems to have bought the bankrupt husk of a German company that made a 2D CAD package in the 90s) was very quick to send me an (unevenly translated) English manual and sent my question about crashes straight to the Caddy++ Support dude, whose first idea fixed my problem. Not bad for 22 bucks.

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  • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    FreeCAD hates joy.

    I don’t get it. FreeCAD does not have any kind of licensing restriction on commercial use. Is there something I’m missing?

    The models and other files produced with FreeCAD are not subject to any license stated above, nor bound to any kind of restriction or ownership. Your files are truly yours. You can set the owner of the file and specify your own license terms for the files you produce inside FreeCAD, via menu File → Project Information.

    Or do you just not like how the program itself or interface works (which is perfectly valid)?

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    • wjrii@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I'm mostly joking about the interface. FreeCAD is the obvious solution for someone who wants no-restrictions on usable 3D CAD software. It's one of the most impressive FLOSS projects out there, bar none. It's awesome.

      It's also deeply committed to parametric principles, and I think the code to go the "final mile" to make an intuitive interface that doesn't violate that paradigm is one of the more jealously guarded parts of the commercial packages. I've successfully made a few parts in FreeCAD, but it's always felt like pulling teeth, turning my hobby into work.

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  • callcc@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why was your copy of BeckerCAD only 20€?

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    • wjrii@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I got it here. It’s still showing as on sale for me. Oddly, only the top “3D Pro” version was on sale.

      If you can’t get the sale, don’t buy it. At 20eur , it’s an interesting experiment. At full price, just get Alibre Atom if you want something with a perpetual license.

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• charmed_electron@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Sweet! I need one of those too. Do these use vacuum or blow air?

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  • wjrii@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They blow air super close to the laser to get rid of smoke and leave you with better cuts, at least slightly, and in some cases significantly. If you have an enclosure, you’d also have a smoke/fume extractor similar to what you might use to print ABS.

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    • eldoom@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      CNC laser operator here.

      I don’t know about these lower power lasers so I may be wrong. With the lasers I’ve used (200-2000W), the air/oxygen is used to create a superheated jacket of gas around the laser which allows it to cut a nice smooth edge. It also has the added benefit of blowing away the slag/dross that’s created.

      When we cut more temperature sensitive materials like aluminum and stainless we use nitrogen, which cools the material. This creates a pretty jagged deal with the dross that you gotta sand off but it prevents blowouts and really creates a nice edge if you get the pressure dialed in just right.

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