Lightobject.com Support Forum

For the past several months I have been assembling and testing a 600 x 400 80 watt laser cutter that was intended to be used in my business to cut out parts for model ship kits. However, I have encountered numerous problems that I have not been able to solve even with Marco's help. My wife and I have both decided to cut our losses and give up this endeavor. It is just too complex and too finicky to be a reliable technology for model ship kit production. If we could have afforded an equivalent commercial laser cutter, perhaps that would have worked for us, but we couldn't.

The problems that I have not been able to solve boil down to 2. At times when cutting, the machine will simply stop moving or suddenly move erratically in the wrong direction. The only way I can stop it when it does this is to turn the machine completely off. The second problem is that even at 60% power, it is not cutting even a 1/4" piece of soft basswood. Weeks ago it would cut the wood at 40% power without any problem at all but occasionally the erratic behavior would rear its ugly face. Now it won't cut even at 60% power. It's only cutting about 1/16" deep. I've quadruple checked and tested the alignment of each mirror but that has not fixed the problem. I've grounded every component in the machine, and lined the area where the laser power supply with aluminum foil to isolate any static electricity build up but that has not improved matters. Besides, it all worked fine a few weeks ago and now it doesn't.

So, we are selling everything that we can to try and recoup some of our investment. I'm posting photos of the machine and a list of all of the parts. I'd love to sell the entire machine but to do that, someone would have to come to our house to pick it up and I would have to completely disassemble it to get it out of the basement. I have thrown away the wooden crates that the heavy parts came in. Whatever I can sell and ship, I will gladly do so. I do have the original boxes that the laser came in and I do have the original cardboard box and styrofoam that the water chiller came in. However, I do not have the wooden crate that the x-y axis came in, so shipping it might be difficult and costly as it is very heavy. Needless to say, it would have to be taken apart to be boxed up and shipped.

Here is a photo of the machine:
I covered the outside in 1/8" acrylic. The back is covered in 1/8" particle board. There are particle board shelves inside that create a complete enclosure and to support all of the electronics.

The control panel in the right hand corner top has a number of features and might be something someone would be interested in as a complete unit. It has the controller panel, the amp meter, a timer that is turned on by a push button when you begin cutting that keeps track of how many hours the laser has been used, another timer that simply ticks whenever the machine itself is turned on, and a second push button that turns on the red dot laser that is inside the beam combiner. On the inside of this panel is all of the wiring and additional components which include an arduino control, a 5 volt power supply and a relay board with 4 relays on it.
I have tons of photos of the machine inside and out and will be happy to provide them if anyone is interested via email. First send me a private message.

Here is a list of everything in the machine and its original price. I'll sell the individual part for any reasonable amount offered plus shipping. I live in Inwood, West Virginia which is just off I-81 and 5 miles north of the Virginia/West Virginia border. That's about 80 miles west of Washington DC as the crow flies. As I said, I'm simply looking for the best offer plus shipping. Everything is being sold "as is", no guarantees from me anyway.

1. XLE 600*400 XY Stages complete kit for DIY CO2 Laser. 2 yrs warranty - OriginalPrice: $810.00 (will sell the xy stage separate or with the stepper motors)

2. Aluminum frame kit (600x400) for CO2 laser machine - Original Price: $550.00 (can only sell the frame with the acrylic cover if someone comes to my house to pick it up)

3. AWC608 Commercial DSP CO2 Laser Engraving/ Cutter Controller - Original Price: $420.00

4. Dual DC 36V & 24V 10A Switching Power Supply. Ideal for DSP System - Original Price: $65.00

5. 3MD560 Leadshine 3 Phase 8.4A 1-axis Stepping Motor Driver (2 of them) - Original Price: $62.00 each

6. CW5000 800W Water chiller for CO2 laser machine (AC110V 60Hz) - Original Price: $645.00

7. Pro 25mm beam combiner mount with laser pointer - Original Price: $69.00

8. High Quality Reci 80W~90W CO2 Sealed Laser Tube(10000Hrs) - Original Price: $585.00 (currently has 4 hours and 37 minutes of usage on it)

9. 80W PWM CO2 Laser Power Supply (110V) - Original Price: $275.00


There are various miscellaneous components that are not in this list, a F63.5 lens and a F100 lens, mirrors, an air pump for the air assist, a 12 volt exhaust fan and a larger 110 volt exhaust fan with a charcoal filter rated at 300 CFM, a 12 volt power supply.

If anyone is interested in purchasing any of these parts, please contact me by private message and tell me what you wish to buy and what your offer is.

Thanks,

Bob Hunt
LSS Enterprises Inc.
dba, Lauck Street Shipyard

Dang it, Bob, I wish I had seen this last week! I was in NJ and NC visiting family and took 81 between them, driving my van! Plus I had sufficient cash in hand to have taken the whole thing off your hands with minimal discount to you. As it is, just last night I placed an order with Marco for, basically, the same thing in kit form.

This error you're having sounds to me like the steppers are getting out of sync. The way you tell a stepper how to work is by giving it a direction and telling it to step. If you are driving them in a fractional mode (1/16 or 1/32 is common) then it could be a pretty simple fix.

Look at how your wiring runs. You need to keep the stepper wires separated from anything with high current or high voltage. This is called "common mode coupling" and is caused by control the wires hearing noise caused by the step commands and interpreting it at the motor incorrectly. There are several ways to solve this, but they would involve some disassembly of wiring (primarily) to verify and correct.

The simplest thing you could do is shield both the power and control leads SEPARATELY.

Another possible cause is insufficient drive on the stepper controls. This would depend on what board you are using for the stepper drivers. A weak drive and they could be getting twanged by a current blip from somewhere. Which also leads to the next possible cause:

It could also be a software coding issue. The micro driving them could be doing a read-modify-write to an I/O port (BAD BAD BAD coding practice, and terribly common among programmers who aren't experienced in embedded systems). They should be writing to a shadow register and then copying the shadow register to the port. Nothing you can do about that one unless you know where to get the source code.

Andy

I'm no longer interested in fixes no matter how simple it might seem or how easy it might seem to fix. This technology just isn't good for my business. I'm selling everything. I've disassembled the entire machine and tomorrow it all goes up on ebay for whatever I can get for it.

Perhaps Marco can put a hold on you order Andy.

Bob

Please PM me your ebay offers so I can bid on them. You have a few items I chose not to get right away, so I may go for those anyway.

Andy

Group,

Here are links to the major components I am selling on eBay. I will post additional links later today for some of the smaller, miscellaneous parts:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123

I want to thank Marco for his unending support. He went above and beyond the call of duty trying to help me solve the problems I was having. It just wasn't something I was willing to continue to throw time into.

I've been in business for over 11 years and have always prided myself for providing quality products and services. I used to produce the finest model ship kits in the world. When the economy went south in 2008, I lost my only wood supplier for my kits and had to sell off the kit business because of it. The loss of kit sales caused us to lose our house and almost put us out of business.

Since then we have slowly recovered downsizing to make ends meet. Now that we're doing better financially, my wife and business partner want to get back into kit production. Before we used 2 CNC router mills that cost $8000 apiece. We can't afford that equipment today but thought a laser cutter might be a reasonable route to go.

My customers have come to expect and demand quality products from me that can be delivered in a reasonable amount of time because my kits have been extremely high priced. Having this laser cutter for a month has taught me a few things and one is that they're very finicky if everything isn't exactly perfect. I spent more time trouble shooting (and fixing) different problems and the experience has taught me that this probably isn't the right technology for me to use to produce the quality of kits I wish to produce again. The angle of the cuts caused by the laser would have been totally unacceptable by my customers.

That is why I have chosen to sell the equipment. It's nothing to do with Marco or the products themselves, they're all excellent quality parts. It's just not the right technology for my particular business needs. Like I said, Marco was a saint in trying to help me and I thank him.

Thanks,

Bob Hunt

Here are the links to the remaining items I'm selling on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... CA:US:1123

Bob

Come on guys, surely someone in this forum could use some of this stuff. Yesterday I cut the prices to rock bottom. We're talking 4 grand worth of stuff that I'm practically giving away now. Take a look again at the new links to the listings on eBay:

2 Stepper Drivers $30.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271524682333?ss ... 1555.l2649
CW 5000 Water Chiller $200.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271525094330?ss ... 1555.l2649
80 Watt Reci Laser $200.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271525095264?ss ... 1555.l2649
600 x 400 Framework $200.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271525095935?ss ... 1555.l2649
600 x 400 x-y Table w/Stepper motors $200.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271525096651?ss ... 1555.l2649
80 watt Laser Power Supply $50.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271525097369?ss ... 1555.l2649
A bunch of miscellaneous electronic parts $25.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271523890269?ss ... 1555.l2649
C02 Eye Glass protection $10.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271523891497?ss ... 1555.l2649
2 DC Power supplies (12 v and 24/36 v) $25.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271523896310?ss ... 1555.l2649
Exhaust fan $5.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271524073330?ss ... 1555.l2649
A more powerful exhaust fan w/charcoal filter $25.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271524075417?ss ... 1555.l2649
Honeycomb for 600 x 400 table $20.00 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/271524078396?ss ... 1555.l2649

I really need to get rid of this stuff and get something for it at least.

Bob

Come on folks, help Bob!

Even though I can't take it back because it sold over a month or two and mony has injected to a new shipment on coming August (40ft container) but I will provide warranty to those parts that Bob had purchased from me and current are selling on eBay. Once you bought any part, get the original order number from Bob and I'll honor the warranty. I do what I can.

Warranty:
XY stage: 2yrs (your purchase date)
Laser tube: 6 months (from original purchase date)
Motor/drivers: 1 year (your purchase date)
DSP controller: 1year (your purchase date)
Water chiller: 1 year (your purchase date)
PSU: 1 year: (your purchase date)

I'm sad to see Bob is leaving the laser community. I wish I could help him more. I was planning to offer him on site service by flying over to his location to assist him if Bob is willing to pay for my ticket and board in the condition that "Only and If Only" I can fix it. Otherwise, I will have to pay for my own expense. Howere, before I made my offer, I heard that Bob decided to leave this with hands clean and I'm heading to China on 20th of this month. No choice but sadly to see his leaving us. It is one of biggest dissappointment that I ever had since there was not a single customer that either I or other folks couldn't help to get problem fixed. I consider this is one of my failure not being able to make him happy and kept him to stay. My apology, Bob! I'm so sorry that I couldn't help you good enough to get rid of the problem.

Marco

BTW, there is a new OS update and I'm not sure if it help. Bob, if you haven't dissambled your system, give it a try
It may or it may not help but nothing to loose to give it a try. I'm surely it is either statics issue or some connection issue.

Nothing worst then just swap parts, isn't it. Assuming if you're not in big hurry (taking order from your customer), why not just give it a try?


Marco

No need to apologize Marco. I should have researched laser cutting more thoroughly. I had confidence I could build the machine and I did. I just did not know how finicky these machines can be and for my business, that just doesn't work for me. I produced the finest model ship kits in the world from 2006 to 2010. One kit, which had over 2000 CNC cut parts in it sold for $1750.00 and I stayed 6 months behind in production because I could only produce 2 of those kits per week running 2 CNC router mills 8 hours a day, 5 days per week.

CNC router mills are tough machines and can take anything you throw at them. I became very dependent on their reliability and accustomed to it. When the economy went south, we lost our wood supplier because his business suffered to. All of the kits were designed by me to be historically correct in every dimension so all of the wood was custom milled to very tight specifications. In the end, I sold off the kit business to a fellow who ended up not doing anything with it.

So after a 4 year hiatus, my wife and I decided it was time to get back into the kit business again only this time we would use off the shelf wood. The kits we plan to produce will still be very high quality kits and probably high priced, but I have built a reputation after being in business for 11 years of producing only quality products. My customers depend on that.

The laser is great technology and every kit manufacturer in the world uses them, but I'm not like all those other kit manufacturers. Those kits have their problems, such as the burned edges on the cut parts, and slight angle due to the nature of the laser. After my experience with this machine, my wife and I talked it over and finally decided that even if I could get the problems solved, it would not produce the high quality kits my customers are accustom to me producing and it could actually hurt us. After doing some research, I found what looks like a pretty good deal on eBay for a CNC mill made in China with some very good quality parts like the quality parts you sell. Reviews on YouTube were great for the mill and it's price is doable for me if I can sell this equipment. Right now that's not going too well though.

I appreciate the offer to honor the warranties on this equipment. I still have all of the purchase receipts with the order numbers and date purchased I can supply to any member in this forum who purchases any of the equipment.

Thank again,

Bob

Tech_Marco wrote:BTW, there is a new OS update and I'm not sure if it help. Bob, if you haven't dissambled your system, give it a try
It may or it may not help but nothing to loose to give it a try. I'm surely it is either statics issue or some connection issue.

Nothing worst then just swap parts, isn't it. Assuming if you're not in big hurry (taking order from your customer), why not just give it a try?


Marco

Thanks but no, I've already taken the entire machine apart. Took me a day to do that and some of the parts are already boxed up and ready to be shipped. But thanks for the offer.

Bob

Tech_Marco wrote:Come on folks, help Bob!

Very generous of you, Marco, to take care of warranty like this.

I PM'd you earlier today.

Andy

Let me know if you any help. I'm going to China and I can get you a milling machine as well.
If interested, tell me the size you want. For those small CNC router like 300x500, it won't cost too much to ship in the States. But It cost $600~800 to ship from China to USA

I carry 1.5KW and 2.2KW water cooled spindle and the VFD. The cheap cheap CNC machine selling on eBay came with 750W air-cooled spindle (usually used spindle) and they won't tell you about it. Or, some spindle are having vibration issue even though they look the same. Just be caution.

I'll stay in China till July 25th. Shoot me email if you need me to buy parts for you. I wish you luck and should you need any help, feel free to contact me. I'm always here and ready to help to the best I can!


Marco

Tech_Marco wrote:Let me know if you any help. I'm going to China and I can get you a milling machine as well.
If interested, tell me the size you want. For those small CNC router like 300x500, it won't cost too much to ship in the States. But It cost $600~800 to ship from China to USA

I carry 1.5KW and 2.2KW water cooled spindle and the VFD. The cheap cheap CNC machine selling on eBay came with 750W air-cooled spindle (usually used spindle) and they won't tell you about it. Or, some spindle are having vibration issue even though they look the same. Just be caution.

I'll stay in China till July 25th. Shoot me email if you need me to buy parts for you. I wish you luck and should you need any help, feel free to contact me. I'm always here and ready to help to the best I can!


Marco

This is the machine I am planning to buy: http://www.ebay.com/itm/261371795056?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

I watched several YouTube videos by people who had bought the machine and they were very positive about it. The movements sounded smooth and the water cooled spindle was extremely quiet. It looks to be a good quality machine. There are cheaper versions such as the 3040 model that just use regular lead screws and lousy stepper motors with very poor wiring and the controller has all kinds of problems according to my research. But this model seems to be an upgrade on everything from the steppers to the ball screws to a better controller.

By the way, here are some photos of two of the kits I used to produce that are under construction by some of my customers. Thought the group might be interested to see what I was producing with CNC machines.

Take care,

Bob

I might add, everything you see in those photos was cut out on the CNC mills. There were very few parts in my kits that the builder had to make himself. The kits had photo etched details also as well as resin castings like carvings and cannons. The individual parts in that parquet floor were all cut out and I provided a drawing that was printed on card stock that the builder simply glued the parts to and then glued the assembly into the model.

These are museum quality models that no other model ship kit manufacturer in the world has ever come close to producing. No other kit manufacturer even produces what is called plank on frame model ship kits.

My website is http://www.lauckstreetshipyard.com. My primary products today are detailed instructions on how to build a number of model ship kits because all of the other kit manufacturers assume everybody who buys their kits already knows how to build a model ship. They give you 10 to 25 pages of instructions. Mine are anywhere from 400 to 1000 pages with hundreds of color photos that take you through the entire construction and assume you have never built a model ship before in your life.

Take care,

Bob