Paul Dietz
03-18-2012, 4:38 PM
I've been lurking here for quite some time, fantasizing about getting a laser for my home shop. I finally took the plunge and got an Epilog 40W Mini18. So let me start by thanking everyone who posts - it really helped me in understanding all the issues. In fairness, I wanted to share a bit about my experience so far.
First a bit about my situation. This is purely a hobby machine. My day job is as a hardware researcher for Microsoft. (Our group works on things like Microsoft Surface, Kinect, keyboards, mice, etc.) As such, I get to play with some awesome toys at work including various 3-D printers, CNC routers, and laser cutters. Once you live in this sort of environment, it's really hard to go back to the idea that a home shop is a bench and a table saw. I should also note that I'm a electrical engineer, so for me, building stuff in the shop is a means to an end (building really cool experiences). So I want the journey to be short and sweet. Hence my desire for rapid prototyping. My home projets tend to be more artsy, and often involve kids. They include things like animatronics (http://AnimatronicsWorkshop.com), fountains (http://www.instructables.com/id/Fountain-Clock/), etc.
My first big purchase for the shop was a CNC router - a small CNC Shark from Rockler. Having one of these is great. It's a very versatile tool. However, I quickly learned that the router itself quickly becomes a project. First problem is that every work piece has to be securely clamped in a way that doesn't interfere with the cutting. This can be a significant challenge. This is by far the most annoying thing about using a router versus a laser. I've destroyed more pieces than I can count because my clamping was inadequate. Another constant issue is flatness. I have to mill the table down regularly because the MDF warps. (There's a new version of the machine with a metal table - clearly, that's the way to go...) You need to use a backer board so that you don't cut the table, and I still haven't found an ideal solution for that. Keeping it flat after a few cuts is challenging, so it constantly needs to be replaced. And the router itself came with no dust collection system (I built one) or even a decent way of zeroing, particularly the Z-axis. I now have reasonable solutions for all these problems, but the up shot is that even the most trivial piece takes about an hour to do. Most problematically, there were so many little tricks to getting things to work, it really wasn't something I was comfortable letting the kids (teenagers) do without serious supervision.
The laser was my attempt to address most of these problems. At work, I can draw up a piece, cut it, and be back at my desk in about 15 minutes. And the pieces generally require no clean up. This is the experience I wanted at home. As such, I generally steered away from the sub-$5000 units - they looked like they would be like my CNC - projects in themselves.
My shop is fairly small, but I wanted something capable and robust. Trotec took 6 months to respond to my inquiries, so they were instantly out. We have Universal Laser units at work, but they have had many issues, and I wasn't impressed with the service we were getting. I thought hard about the Zings, but there were too many compromises. That left me looking at the LaserPro C180 and the Epilog Mini18. The machines are really very comparable, with fairly subtle pluses and minuses. I ended up deciding that I liked the C180 better (just a better design, more solid), but the lower price and better reputation for service swayed me to get the Mini18.
It took several weeks for the laser to arrive once I ordered it. Although I was hoping for simplicity, I quickly realized that setting up for the laser was just a lot of little things to deal with. My Harbor Freight dust collection system that I setup for the router is very loud - speced at over 100dB! Of course, the router itself is even louder. Hearing protection is required. I really wanted the laser to be something I could use without protection. That started on my journey to find reasonably quiet compressors (for air assist) and blowers.
I found the same compressor Epilog sells - a new Gast DOA (horrible name!) - for less than half the price on Ebay. This line has a lot of different options, but the key thing is the last two letters which designate the motor. The one Epilog sells is an AA. The other options are things like feet, handles, etc. Mine came without feet, or a fitting. The feet use a 10-32 screw, which is a tad unusual, and it took me awhile to find compatible shock mounts. The compressor gets hot, so you need something that won't melt to keep it off the floor. The laser air supply connects via a 1/4" OD tube and uses one of those fittings where you just push the tube in. (It releases by pushing the ring in.) It took a bit of hunting, but I found a IN103-104-021 Male Push In Connector 1/4 tube x 1/4 NPT fitting worked great on the compressor. Yet another Ebay order.
As for the blower, I ended up getting a Penn State Industries DC3XX 1.5HP DC3 Portable Dust Collector Motor Blower (no bag or hose) for $300. It is dramatically quieter than the red Harbor Freight unit I had, and it seems to work much better, even if the specs seem comparable. Actually, one key spec is different - it's an amazing 40dB quieter! It's an impressive product. I think it's actually quieter than the fans in the laser.
For the time being, I am simply venting to the outside. However, the smell is getting back into the house, and I have close neighbors. I looked at the commercial filters, but they are much more than I need and way too expensive. So I am in the process of building a DIY filter unit. My 55lbs. bag of GC C-30 activated carbon just arrived from General Carbon.
We had an incident with one of the lasers at work (yes, someone walked away and it caught fire), so I was paranoid about fire protection. I can't believe that fire suppression is not a standard feature on laser cutters. I will probably build my own system for this. But for the time being, I ran out and got a CO2 extinguisher to use manually if needed.
Just to be compatible with everyone, I picked up a copy of CorelDraw X5 Suite. You can get it much cheaper than the price Epilog is charging. I find it occasionally hangs on the Epilog driver on my Win 7 X64 box. I haven't found a solution to this yet. As someone who works for Microsoft, I find this totally unacceptable. A lot of people blame MS for these sorts of problems, but more typically it's bad drivers written by others. When I want to do serious precision mechanical design, I use SolveSpace. So I will have to investigate the path to the laser from that...
A final gotcha - I had wired my shop 4 years ago with 220V specifically because I figured I would get a laser someday. I have an L6-30 twistlock socket. I told Epilog what I needed, but they actually shipped a short IEC cable that went to bare wires. The laser supply auto switches, so I was able to use a standard IEC cable on 110V until I was able to get the right power cord elsewhere. For the record, the receptacle on the laser is an IEC C13 - the same as on most desktop computers.
When the laser arrived, it was mostly a matter of getting it out of the box (it's pretty heavy for one person to do, but I managed), removing the packing, and plugging everything in. But getting it to talk to my PC was significantly harder than I expected. I am no neophyte when it comes to network stuff, but I needed to call tech support to get everything working on my network. The documentation was scattered and incomplete. Epilog was closed for the weekend, but the sales guy called me back, and walked me through it.
My first cut, surprisingly, did not work. The head moved, but no beam appeared. After a few more attempts, it just started working. This problem has continued. Whenever I turn on the laser, it needs to do some pretend cutting before the laser actually fires. Typically, it's just a few seconds. But I find that surprising. I never saw that behavior on other lasers I have used. Epilog tells me this is normal. Not so sure...
Once I started cutting, I started playing with the saved settings in the Epilog driver. I found that these required a lot of changes. First, even though I had specified a Mini18, the settings were for the bed size of a Zing. Some other things were off as well. For example, none had auto-focus enabled. So I spent awhile going through and editing all of these. I was hoping these would just be text XML files so I could quickly do this in Notepad. But they are not.
Over the last two weeks, I've been trying out different materials, different settings, etc. I'm still learning what materials work well, and how to finish them. I'll probably post more on that later...
I finally decided to do my first real project - some engraved pins for my daughter's Girl Scout troop. Unfortunately, just after I finished the first sheet, I let the lid slip, and it slammed from about an inch above close. That little jar was enough to make the laser go nuts. The table immediately rose until it jammed, and then everything, except the fans went dead. I searched, but couldn't find a service manual. And Epilog is closed for the weekend. So I dove in, and found the main board had apparently fried itself. (48V was on, but none of the lower supplies were active.) I could see that the Vcc pin on one of the motor drive ICs had vaporized. I presume this happened when the Z-axis jammed itself. I found a limit switch on the bottom of the Z-axis, but none on the top. So I presume it just kept driving until it self-destructed. Anyhow, I started a ticket with Epilog. As a weekend laser warrior with a day job, only being able to get service weekdays is a bit of a problem. Kind of disappointed that a two-week old laser is having this problem...
So that's been my experience so far. It's been a surprising amount of effort to get things this far (it's definitely not as easy as setting up a new printer), but I'm still hopeful that once it's all going, things will run smoothly.
Thanks again to all!
--- paul
First a bit about my situation. This is purely a hobby machine. My day job is as a hardware researcher for Microsoft. (Our group works on things like Microsoft Surface, Kinect, keyboards, mice, etc.) As such, I get to play with some awesome toys at work including various 3-D printers, CNC routers, and laser cutters. Once you live in this sort of environment, it's really hard to go back to the idea that a home shop is a bench and a table saw. I should also note that I'm a electrical engineer, so for me, building stuff in the shop is a means to an end (building really cool experiences). So I want the journey to be short and sweet. Hence my desire for rapid prototyping. My home projets tend to be more artsy, and often involve kids. They include things like animatronics (http://AnimatronicsWorkshop.com), fountains (http://www.instructables.com/id/Fountain-Clock/), etc.
My first big purchase for the shop was a CNC router - a small CNC Shark from Rockler. Having one of these is great. It's a very versatile tool. However, I quickly learned that the router itself quickly becomes a project. First problem is that every work piece has to be securely clamped in a way that doesn't interfere with the cutting. This can be a significant challenge. This is by far the most annoying thing about using a router versus a laser. I've destroyed more pieces than I can count because my clamping was inadequate. Another constant issue is flatness. I have to mill the table down regularly because the MDF warps. (There's a new version of the machine with a metal table - clearly, that's the way to go...) You need to use a backer board so that you don't cut the table, and I still haven't found an ideal solution for that. Keeping it flat after a few cuts is challenging, so it constantly needs to be replaced. And the router itself came with no dust collection system (I built one) or even a decent way of zeroing, particularly the Z-axis. I now have reasonable solutions for all these problems, but the up shot is that even the most trivial piece takes about an hour to do. Most problematically, there were so many little tricks to getting things to work, it really wasn't something I was comfortable letting the kids (teenagers) do without serious supervision.
The laser was my attempt to address most of these problems. At work, I can draw up a piece, cut it, and be back at my desk in about 15 minutes. And the pieces generally require no clean up. This is the experience I wanted at home. As such, I generally steered away from the sub-$5000 units - they looked like they would be like my CNC - projects in themselves.
My shop is fairly small, but I wanted something capable and robust. Trotec took 6 months to respond to my inquiries, so they were instantly out. We have Universal Laser units at work, but they have had many issues, and I wasn't impressed with the service we were getting. I thought hard about the Zings, but there were too many compromises. That left me looking at the LaserPro C180 and the Epilog Mini18. The machines are really very comparable, with fairly subtle pluses and minuses. I ended up deciding that I liked the C180 better (just a better design, more solid), but the lower price and better reputation for service swayed me to get the Mini18.
It took several weeks for the laser to arrive once I ordered it. Although I was hoping for simplicity, I quickly realized that setting up for the laser was just a lot of little things to deal with. My Harbor Freight dust collection system that I setup for the router is very loud - speced at over 100dB! Of course, the router itself is even louder. Hearing protection is required. I really wanted the laser to be something I could use without protection. That started on my journey to find reasonably quiet compressors (for air assist) and blowers.
I found the same compressor Epilog sells - a new Gast DOA (horrible name!) - for less than half the price on Ebay. This line has a lot of different options, but the key thing is the last two letters which designate the motor. The one Epilog sells is an AA. The other options are things like feet, handles, etc. Mine came without feet, or a fitting. The feet use a 10-32 screw, which is a tad unusual, and it took me awhile to find compatible shock mounts. The compressor gets hot, so you need something that won't melt to keep it off the floor. The laser air supply connects via a 1/4" OD tube and uses one of those fittings where you just push the tube in. (It releases by pushing the ring in.) It took a bit of hunting, but I found a IN103-104-021 Male Push In Connector 1/4 tube x 1/4 NPT fitting worked great on the compressor. Yet another Ebay order.
As for the blower, I ended up getting a Penn State Industries DC3XX 1.5HP DC3 Portable Dust Collector Motor Blower (no bag or hose) for $300. It is dramatically quieter than the red Harbor Freight unit I had, and it seems to work much better, even if the specs seem comparable. Actually, one key spec is different - it's an amazing 40dB quieter! It's an impressive product. I think it's actually quieter than the fans in the laser.
For the time being, I am simply venting to the outside. However, the smell is getting back into the house, and I have close neighbors. I looked at the commercial filters, but they are much more than I need and way too expensive. So I am in the process of building a DIY filter unit. My 55lbs. bag of GC C-30 activated carbon just arrived from General Carbon.
We had an incident with one of the lasers at work (yes, someone walked away and it caught fire), so I was paranoid about fire protection. I can't believe that fire suppression is not a standard feature on laser cutters. I will probably build my own system for this. But for the time being, I ran out and got a CO2 extinguisher to use manually if needed.
Just to be compatible with everyone, I picked up a copy of CorelDraw X5 Suite. You can get it much cheaper than the price Epilog is charging. I find it occasionally hangs on the Epilog driver on my Win 7 X64 box. I haven't found a solution to this yet. As someone who works for Microsoft, I find this totally unacceptable. A lot of people blame MS for these sorts of problems, but more typically it's bad drivers written by others. When I want to do serious precision mechanical design, I use SolveSpace. So I will have to investigate the path to the laser from that...
A final gotcha - I had wired my shop 4 years ago with 220V specifically because I figured I would get a laser someday. I have an L6-30 twistlock socket. I told Epilog what I needed, but they actually shipped a short IEC cable that went to bare wires. The laser supply auto switches, so I was able to use a standard IEC cable on 110V until I was able to get the right power cord elsewhere. For the record, the receptacle on the laser is an IEC C13 - the same as on most desktop computers.
When the laser arrived, it was mostly a matter of getting it out of the box (it's pretty heavy for one person to do, but I managed), removing the packing, and plugging everything in. But getting it to talk to my PC was significantly harder than I expected. I am no neophyte when it comes to network stuff, but I needed to call tech support to get everything working on my network. The documentation was scattered and incomplete. Epilog was closed for the weekend, but the sales guy called me back, and walked me through it.
My first cut, surprisingly, did not work. The head moved, but no beam appeared. After a few more attempts, it just started working. This problem has continued. Whenever I turn on the laser, it needs to do some pretend cutting before the laser actually fires. Typically, it's just a few seconds. But I find that surprising. I never saw that behavior on other lasers I have used. Epilog tells me this is normal. Not so sure...
Once I started cutting, I started playing with the saved settings in the Epilog driver. I found that these required a lot of changes. First, even though I had specified a Mini18, the settings were for the bed size of a Zing. Some other things were off as well. For example, none had auto-focus enabled. So I spent awhile going through and editing all of these. I was hoping these would just be text XML files so I could quickly do this in Notepad. But they are not.
Over the last two weeks, I've been trying out different materials, different settings, etc. I'm still learning what materials work well, and how to finish them. I'll probably post more on that later...
I finally decided to do my first real project - some engraved pins for my daughter's Girl Scout troop. Unfortunately, just after I finished the first sheet, I let the lid slip, and it slammed from about an inch above close. That little jar was enough to make the laser go nuts. The table immediately rose until it jammed, and then everything, except the fans went dead. I searched, but couldn't find a service manual. And Epilog is closed for the weekend. So I dove in, and found the main board had apparently fried itself. (48V was on, but none of the lower supplies were active.) I could see that the Vcc pin on one of the motor drive ICs had vaporized. I presume this happened when the Z-axis jammed itself. I found a limit switch on the bottom of the Z-axis, but none on the top. So I presume it just kept driving until it self-destructed. Anyhow, I started a ticket with Epilog. As a weekend laser warrior with a day job, only being able to get service weekdays is a bit of a problem. Kind of disappointed that a two-week old laser is having this problem...
So that's been my experience so far. It's been a surprising amount of effort to get things this far (it's definitely not as easy as setting up a new printer), but I'm still hopeful that once it's all going, things will run smoothly.
Thanks again to all!
--- paul