DAng, For having that bit hanging waaaaay out there and the router down low (high Z), you were ripping through that material! If you choke the bit in as far as it can go, and pull the router up as far is it will go you can get the vac pretty close to the material and it should be much cleaner.
How did it seem?
So fast. That bit looks so big.
How exciting!
That’s the long bit that I got for the LR2.yeah, it was up pretty high, so the vac wasn’t doing much. Should have left it off.
So yeah, up high, in the middle of the table and just the temporary struts, and still good performance.
That was a solid test. The make your own strut idea has already passed with flying colors in my opinion.
So with a shorter bit, it makes me wonder what kind of speed I can get out if it… The taller YZ plates give me about 140mm of Z movement. Since I increased that by 50mm, I guess that makes the stock ones good for 90, which is probably plenty, but as I said, I have this idea of carving foam, and the stock I was looking at is 2", so that means I need 50mm of plunge, plus 50mm of cutting bit, so that’s at least 100mm (102, if you want to get picky)
I have the max X and Y speeds defined currently at 4500mm/min in the firmware. I could see maybe wanting to go that fast for the laser, but now I’m wondering if I can actually cut faster… Well, probably not that fast anyway.
Oh, and speaking of the laser… The Neje shop has finally conceded that the package was lost, and want to send me another module. I guess I’ll see that in a month… In the meantime, I do have the Makita adapter printed up, should fit in the rings. I think I need to figure out the air assist though.
What was the cutting speed in that video. Not 75mm/s, right?
Nice. It would have been better if it had gotten to your door in the first place. But at least you will get it and you won’t have to pay double. 
1800mm/min, so 30mm/s, 3000mm/min rapids.
I’ll look forward to getting the laser. I’ll just need to make sure that I’ve got things prepared for it.
The biggest advantage over the LR2 so far for.me is hold down room. I feel like I could actually use hold downs on this build. With the LR2, so many times I’d just use the Primo because holding the work down to the spoilboard was too much trouble with the minimal clearance that the gantry had. As a result I’d only use half the material, or just use the Primo. This is more readily usable for me. (Don’t get me wrong, the LR2 is a good machine, and can do things the Primo can’t for large size particularly.)
Did you do one plate at a time? How much did you have to remove(other than the temporary plates)?
Cutting ~5mm MDF (plus some spoil board) at 30mm/s is good.
For me Heffe. I did all three plates at once. Disconnected the belts, turned it 90 degrees on the table so I could get to everything without reaching, and could roll it back. The Core (two lower bearings) and X belt tensioner come off as well. I then put all three plates on loose, to align all the braces and end plates. Then came back and tightened them up.
This is very exciting for me, this is the part where I feel like a nascar pit crew. Right now waiting to need to jump in to action and fix something, or just cheer on my Crew. All day yesterday I was prepping kits checking the inbox every couple bags to see if there were any updates.
I did all 3. The length of the final one, each segment is bigger than the temporary strut, so it’s not like I could leave one on. I also really did not want to do this more than once. (In my video, you can see that there are 3 strut pieces.)
I also stretched the recommendations, and did not cut all 3 close to the side, I cut them in the locations you see there.
DOC of 3.5mm, that’s 1/8" nominal MDF with a melamine coat. That’s the same DOC I use for the Primo. – Same speed for the 1/8" single flute, too, though this is a double flute bit.
I started by undoing the Y belts, so that I could get to stuff. I removed the temporary plates, which for me involved removing the rear rail slider. (With a shorter screw driver, I could have left it on, but my ratcheting screwdriver is too long, and I wanted to be straight onto the screw head.)
Then I started looking at the front strut plate, and removed the core, and the X belt tensioner. Then took a break when the end braces let go of the conduit and everything fell apart. I had to re-run the wiring from the Y1 and Z1 motors and endstops, because I needed to move the Duet enclosure from the second space to over the brace. (I should have put it there in the first place, I did notice that Ryan’s enclosure had that space in the hook at the same distance as the temporary strut, but I was hoping I could get there.) The first strut was by far the most tricky, the conduit kept wanting to pop out, and nothing wanted to remain square.
Once the front strut was on and tight, the conduit was clamped in securely. I put the core back on, and the X belt tensioner, then flipped it around to but the bottom strut on. At this point I should have bundled up the extra wiring, but I thought I’d wait to do that when I had all of the laser wiring in place. So the wiring is still a bit of a hot mess. Then I reattached the rear rail roller.
With the bottom strut in place, I put it back up on its feet, to put the back plate on.
At ot’s most complete disassembly, it certainly LOOKED as though I’d taken it completely apart, but with wiring in place.
So observations so far:
The issue I was having with the front rail roller creeping in is still there. It’s not as bad, but still noticeable that it does not want to sit in there. Something isn’t sitting square there. I don’t think that the wood is warped. I may need to tighten screws into the linear rails again. I had a bigger issue there on the other side, which resulted in the Z screw binding because the drive and the nut weren’t aligned well enough. That isn’t happening, but the misalignment is a bit worrying.
I haven’t checked diagonals of cuts yet for square, just sighted along the gantry with a framing square on the rail, and it looks good. The diagonals on the struts are as close to dead on as I can see on the tape, but that’s not a lot of X, so it could be off by a bit and not easily seen.
I would say do a quick check on the diagonals, and check the width at the front of the yz plates vs the back
Mine will thunk a bit but only if I am really really skewed. Like pushing it by hand from the wheeled plate only.
Speaking of skewed…
Still something not quite straight with the overall build. It’s better than it was with the temporary strut, but still a little off. I’ll be hunting that down before I start my next Repeat build.
Also in the offing is adding power management to my table. This has been “in the works” since I started the LR2 build, so it’s really overdue. The general plan is to have the master power/emergency shut off at the home corner, and then about midway down the Y span to have power outlets. 2 switches, one for master power, and one for the tools (router, laser, or whatever)
Score!
Okay, so now I have a laser module, and I got a 12V power supply for it as well. This is a good thing since my 12V PSU died a horrible death.
I do need better eye protection before I start using the laser much though.
Minor gripe time.
The vac shoe does not allow the laser module in Robert’s Makita mount. The mount fits into the LR3, but the vac shoe prevents the laser from being lowered enough to focus. The focal point is higher than the bottom of the core piece when the laser itself it sitting on the vac shoe.
So… Time to fire up the CAD, and start work on an alternate mount for the LR3. I think that I’ll just clip it onto the side of the router.
Don’t most of the diode lasers have like a 2.5" focal length? That dust shoe is 25mm from the surface.
Yeah, the Neje’s laser is inset from the bottom of the heat sink, so it’s about 18mm from the base of the heat sink. So with the heat sink sitting on top of the dust shoe, it doesn’t get low enough. I ended up grinding the Z motors against the low hard stops.
If it were my Genmitsu 5W, it would probably be acceptable, but that needs a very differnet mount, and my little CoreXY rig was designed around that laser module, so it can/should stay where it is.
Not a major problem, and seems more related to Neje doing things different.
Okay, so setting up laser mode on the Duet was more of a pain than it should be, but it’s done.
The example PCB and code they give to enable the laser on the Duet 2 uses heater 3 on the expansion port. Mine seems to be nonfunctional, and is not providing a PWM signal. At least it’s not providing a PWM signal that I can use, because as soon as I supply power to the laser, it’s on full blast, and nothing seems to shut it off.
So, I hacked it around, and directed the second extruder heater at it. (Could have used the primary one, or the heated bed, I suppose.) Tested, and managed to burn a controlled hole in the cardboard box next to the one that I burned when I first connected power to the laser an switched it on. I tried it at 1/255 power (Just enough to see that it’s on) and at 1/16 step intervals (S16, S32, S48, S64, S80, S96) until it started marking the cardboard with 5 second bursts (Calibrated by moving the X axis for 5mm at 60mm/min.) This was all with a very unfocused beam as the cardboard was much too far from the laser for good focus. It looked like about a 10mm square.
I suppose that I never mentioned what came in the cardboard box… I decided that the cheap eye protection that came with my Genmitsu laser wasn’t good enough, so I bought a much better set of eye protection. Probably still not the best, but seems to be much more effective at blocking the laser light, it is visible but not as glaring with these.
