The costs are not insignificant. For me, I am not trying to start a business. So the joy of the build and the projects it lets me do has to be worth the money. Every machine comes with the risk that I may not like using it or I may not get good results too. The MPCNC is a great fit for that because I was able to build it and not worry that I would not be able to get value from it.
On a $3k laser, you almost have to have a business plan ready to pay for it. And you can do that, for sure. Either doing custom jobs or making trinkets to sell. It would be easy to pay for the machine that way. Just not necessarily your time and the machine.
Someone made a video series about doing a CO2 laser on an MPCNC. Eventually he took it apart and I always worried the gantry would go out of square and it would fry some eyeballs. Making all the mirrors in the LR gantry would make it impossible to get our of alignment.
Has anyone done some shopping? What would you need for all the laser parts? Is there a non-liquid cooled option to just get a proof of concept going? At a minimum, it would need a power supply, the tube, three 90* mirrors and the focusing lens bit. It would be atask just to get rhe dimensions needed for CAD. I would be tempted to start with a static setup on 2020 to just get everything aligned and focused. Then try to measure and cad up a CO2 gantry and start flinging it around at different speeds and accelerations.
I found an affordable setup of CO2 tube, water pump, PSU and basic ancilliaries at Ali Express, with the usual Ali Express caveats. With mirrors, focusing lens (I chose 38mm, but was giving serious consideration to 51mm) and holding clamps, maybe $250-300 USD. That was only 40W though. The price jumps considerably at 100 or120W, and I was planning on a large bucket as a “chiller”.
My 2020/2040 extrusion laser has a NEJE E40 diode on it, but was originally conceived for a CO2 laser, which is why the bed is steel. Not that I regret the steel with the diode laser, of course. The plan would have been to run the coolant return through a car heater core or similar returning to the bucket and if that was still too warm, add a fan.
I haven’t bought any CO2 laser stuff, I wanted to be sure of my motion system with the diode first. So far, I’ve been alsatisfied with the diode