To be fair, I bought ANOTHER laser cutter. A few years ago I got really excited about the idea of having one of these tools at my disposal and (after a ton of research to see if it was a good idea) I purchased a relatively inexpensive Chinese K-40 laser engraver.
The K-40 style laser engraver is a CO2 laser in a cheap metal housing and all of the guts to make the thing run. I spent HOURS tweaking the thing to get it to work the way I expected it to be able to work. It never seemed to have the power to cut things the way I expected based on what I was able to see others doing with the same kind of setup. Even with that in mind and keeping my expectations low it seemed that it was a lot of work to make the tool useful in any meaningful way. It turned out to be more of a hobby than a tool in much the same way it seems like some people buy cars not for transportation but to tinker with. That isn’t what I wanted. I needed a tool. So I eventually gave it away to a friend who I thought might be able to get more out of it than I did (and he has).
Cut to a couple of months ago. I think it was a YouTube video where I saw somebody demonstrating a laser cutter that did about what I expected mine to do back when I bought it but it was a super-simple design that didn’t require the large metal casing, the laser itself was tiny in comparison and look far less complex than even a simple 3D printer. Cost-wise it was far cheaper than my original K-40.
Let me jump back a second to that research that I originally did on lasers cutters (which I’m going to call them even though the term laser engraver constantly fights for supremacy). I recall now that some of my research had led me to the fact that some people had been stripping the lasers out of their CD/DVD burners and experimenting with what they could do with those. At the time I was interested in the fact that somebody was using a low power diode laser like this to cut stencils out of masking tape. The problem with those lasers is that you couldn’t do that much more with them and they seemed pretty expensive for the limited amount of power you got. It made sense, though. Those lasers could be fit inside a component of a computer where as the CO2 lasers I had seen were about 18” long and as big around as a pint glass. Of course they were going to have more power.
So, back to now. It turns out that the dead-simple, lightweight laser cutters I was seeing now were based on that lower-powered diode laser technology (which I’m not going to explain because I don’t fully understand - feel free to go look that up elsewhere). Apparently in the intervening years people have been figuring out how to make those lasers more powerful. Enough so that they are on-par in many respects with a low-end CO2 laser. Not in all respects, mind you. They have their limitations.
I think you need to see some pictures before we move forward. This is the laser that I bought.
There are three variations of this and the main difference is the laser head that is supplied. They are all otherwise identical. The cheapest of the three heads is the one that is really mostly for engraving. The laser apparently has the best resolution so if engraving was your thing that would probably be the direction you’d want to go. The other two cost the same. One is the high-power one that has a long focal length that can cut well even though thicker material. Obviously, if cutting is your thing then this is the one to go with. The third sort of bridges the gap between the two. It does nice engraving, it can cut pretty well but has a short focal length which means it’s good at cutting thinner materials. it is not the best at either function but can do both well enough. That’s the one I bought (AL2 LU2-4-SF)
So how does it work? I am inclined to use expletives to express how happy I am with this new laser. It didn’t take long to assemble, Figuring out the software didn’t take long either (more on the later maybe). And I did my first project from scratch in short order. Have a look.
With that project done I had newfound confidence to try something more useful. I knew that I wanted some counters for the game Dead Man’s Hand that were not offered by the manufacturer so I whipped up a design and tried my hand at combining cutting and engraving together in one go.
Not entirely successful but the problem here is operator error and nothing to do with the machine which operated beautifully. The problem occurred because I had the machine set up too close to the wall and so it got bumped and everything shifted slightly. The next batch will be perfect of that I am sure. Also, the counters I made are perfectly useable.
With that project under my belt I decided I needed to organize my paint. First I cut a design that I found on Thiniverse.
I don’t have a ton of Citadel paints anymore so I didn’t need too much in the way of organization. This is fine, but I don’t love it. I also considered that I might want to change the rack that I use for my dropper bottles. So I came up with this.
I call it my “paint hive” and I figure I’ll need about 5 more to replace my current PVC pipe rack. but when I’m done it will look awesome.
Then I decided to jump back to doing terrain-related stuff. First off I wanted to experiment with engraving on EPS foam and EPA foam and I ended up here.
Painted EPS foam engraving test
Unpainted EPA foam engraving test
Unpainted EPA foam engraving test
I found these experiments to be very exciting but I didn’t have anything to apply them to immediately so I went on to another terrain project. This time, Moe’s Tavern in scale with my Marvel Crisis Protocol terrain. Why? Because it would be fun.
Moe’s Tavern. The early stages
Moe’s Tavern - late stages
The project is taken from one I found the files for online. Mostly just converted from EPS and then upscaled to 1/48 scale. As I write this I still haven’t completed it - but it’s close.
This isn’t even everything that I’ve done. I’ve been keeping a file with a long list of possible projects and things I want to keep in mind for the future. The tool seems to have opened up my skull and stirred my brains in the most positive way possible. I’m constantly excited about what I can do with it and what I WILL do with it.
I’ve always been more of a model painter than a model maker and if I’m honest I think the main reason is because I kind of suck at cutting things. It’s as simple as that. I want to make a thing, I come up with a design, I start to cut parts… and it all seems to go downhill from there. Yes, I have scratch built things but I have this real hang-up with cutting things accurately which tends to stop me before I get started. This tool bypasses that hang-up entirely and hands me parts that are ready to go.
I’ve also realized that this gets me more excited to use than my 3D printers have. I’m not entirely sure why but I think that it’s because I’m never entirely sure what I’m going to get when I print something. Maybe it’ll be cool and useful, maybe not. I might need to run it again after tweaking the settings to get a better outcome and then wait hours to see if that worked. With the cutter the parts that I get are usually what I asked it to cut. If I didn’t give it enough power the first time I just run it again. If I gave it too much… the board under the work gets a little more scorched.
So here we are just under a month since I purchased this new tool and all of the above are things that I’ve accomplished with it in that time. I’m still just as excited about it today as the day it arrived and I can’t think of a better endorsement for adding this kind of tool to your shop.