Hello from North West

[Kris]

Hi,

I got an LS3020 a few years ago. Had to change a mirror, extend the gantry mirror to align the laser beam, set up extraction etc. I need to replace a switch on the front, maybe get some better extraction to stop the room smelling of smoke, so I'm looking for little bits of advice like that. I don't use it for long periods so cooling isn't an issue at the moment, but I might need to consider that soon - or get a larger tank of water.

Not sure what else to say. It's a lovely piece of equipment, possibilities are numerous, would like to cut some thin veneer and layer those up to make some intricate designs. I heard about a plugin that split 3D Sketchup models into slices and laid them out on a single page so you can make slot together 3D objects, that'd be great to do.

The obvious acrylic necklaces and custom greetings cards would be fun and useful, and I also got a small letterpress recently so I may cut some custom blocks for printing on that, maybe make some more type.

In terms of setup, I tried to run XP in VirtualBox on my Macbook Pro, and for a time that seemed to work, but the USB port shut down whenever the LS3020 had finished a cut, so I had to reinstate it each time, a bit odd and slightly tedious. I use NewlyDraw 1.5, and it would often crash, needed a full Macbook restart and also a full laser cutter shutdown before it would fire again. I suspect swapping my dxf files from Mac to XP isn't ideal and I need to stick to one format. They open anywhere because it's the same file, but they're very temperamental.

So for reliability I use an 8 year old tower PC running Windows XP, which isn't ideal, but it works. I tried a very old Dell laptop (with an A:/ floppy drive!) and that wouldn't do it, and a slim newer Samsung Netbook a while ago but that wouldn't control the laser either. So I'm stuck with the tower PC for the time being, hopefully get something smaller to save on desktop space.

So yes, any sagely wisdom is welcome, and tips for general running, but at the moment I'm in the honeymoon period and I'm generally very pleased and impressed with it all.

Thanks.

[Daven]

Hi Kris,
Welcome

Both PhillyDee and myself started off with 3020's (and no doubt a few others here) and have now got bigger machines. It is a great laser to start off with if the bed size is big enough.

Cooling - yeah a big tank will help, I used a 20ltr tank and found I could get a few hours but it struggled during the summer. Try to keep below 21 degrees if you can.

Not sure about Sketchup - I use AutoCad.

NewlyDraw is ok - shame it doesn't have better layer control but you find ways around it. I still have the 3020 and use it now and then but run it off a Windows 7 32bit pc (has to be 32 bit as there are no 64bit drivers).

Best

Dave

[bobg]

Hi kris

I use my 3020 in the house. Had a hole knocked in the wall and added a £70 in-line extractor fan to the extraction hose to solve any fume problems.

Bob

[Matrix]

Welcome Kris,

I heard about a plugin that split 3D Sketchup models into slices

We use one of the bigger machine, so I'm not familiar with NewlyDraw - but we have been using Sketchup to do our modelling for a year or two now, so if you are planning to use that for your 3D work, feel free to post/PM if you need some advice.
I'd also strongly advise signing up to the "SketchUcation" forum, as it has a wealth of info, very helpful 'gurus', and literally hundreds of free Sketchup plugins - including this one, which may be the one that you had heard about. I've also just started writing a few of my own Sketchup plugins to try and speed up my workflow, so if you have any ideas for little 'features' that would help customise it for us Laser geeks, I'd be glad to hear from you (no promises though - my programming skills are very rudimentary!).

Cheers,
Steve.

[Kris]

Thanks for the tips guys. I was thinking a bigger water container would be an idea, but 20L sounds like a bit of a beast.

The extractor that came with the cutter runs at 2.5m3 per minute, I've seen some kitchen extractors from places like Screwfix that do about 7.5, would this be enough to get rid of the smokey smells? What extraction rate is yours, bobg?

I'm getting quite a few files together at once so I ran it for a while the other day - has anyone noticed the laser stops responding when the water gets warm? I get a USB error sometimes - is this a safety feature?

I didn't know I could run Windows 7 on a 32 bit machine, I assumed it was just XP that was the issue. Good to know.

Cheers again,

Kris

[PhillyDee]

I was using one of these:
http://www.screwfix.com/p/100mm-mixed-flow-fan/26867
On my LS3020, I now have a much larger solution as I am in an industrial unit, and noise is not an issue (I am currently there with the radio blasting Absolute Radio 90's. Some great tunes on.
Anyway . . . .
That one worked fine for me, was quite quiet, but you still got a little bit of smoke smell. Far far better than the stock fan though!

I have never noticed any cutting out of the laser when it got warm, though you do not want to be cutting at anything over 24 Degrees in my experience (about 14 degrees is the sweet spot, I run a chiller on my 6840) as power rapidly drops off at this point.

[Kris]

Philly, that looks about right for a fan, should be twice the power of what I'm using at the minute, thanks.

My laser cutter keeps crashing, like I said, I thought it was a safety feature. I've only got a few litres of water but I hardly use it, so it's not a major issue. But it didn't work at all today, kept crashing and had to be turned off and on again before it would work again. I'll try posting something on this in the right forum thread.

Thanks again,

Kris

[bobg]

Hi Kris

I bought this 4" in-line fan. Works well for me and isn't too noisy.

http://www.fantronix.com/acatalog/In_Li ... __dia.html

Bob

[Kris]

Hi again,

Thought I'd do a little update as I've used the cutter a bit more:

Still looking at getting some better extraction, but I've been holding off as I hope to move the cutter to a different room so I'll get it sorted after the move. But it may now be more urgent as I raster etched about 10 lines of thick text on an A4 sheet of birch ply, took about 20 minutes and the room was filled with smoke, actually stung my eyes.

I got a bigger water tank and it doesn't warm up as fast, er, obviously.

I think what was happening with the crashing was that I was using NewlyDraw in several different OS setups - XP on a tower, trying XP on a laptop and then XP through VirtualBox on the Macbook. This last one had problems because of USB permissions - VirtualBox pinches the trackpad, keyboard and USB ports to run its OS, but the port would disconnect after each cut was complete.

There seems to be a DXF file size limit, but possibly only in one format, I haven't been able to pin it down - this crashed NewlyDraw several times. But the main one was that I think I had the cut speed set too high on one of my NewlyDraws. I think the limit is 50mm/s and I had it set to 65 on one computer and that was why it kept cutting out and crashing.

I now have an old Fujitsu Amilo La 1703 laptop, 32bit, so I can finally get rid of the tower, make some more desk space.

Anyway, getting better, I keep reading the forums, I'll definitely keep posting, hopefully another update soon to say I've got my extraction sorted.

Thanks again.