After spending the past year in some sort of weird funk/malaise and losing interest in a lot of my hobbies, I’m almost grateful my daughter’s homemade (by me) laser engraver started acting up… mostly due to poor connections in a bunch of Dupont connectors. It “sported” an early Banggood 3.5W laser module that mostly “worked” but was really “just marginal” at best for some of the wooden jewelry she’s been making.
Anyway, not having laser shopped in quite a while, and wanting something a bit more powerful, I looked at that Neje 40640 module you guys referenced… and decided to give it a go. Actually got to me in just a few days from a US warehouse… and started playing with it yesterday. No problems at all… I’d played with other Neje laser modules in the past and this one fired right up. It’s pretty impressive… through-cut a small willow bandsawn plank in one pass, 200 mm/min and 100% power.
Then I decided to look into air-assist. I’ve rather liked the setup I described in @geodave’s Cantilever Laser Engraver thread… so wanted something similar on the Neje module. The following photos show what I’ve come up with for the laser module… the rest of the air-assist setup is identical to that I described in the thread referenced above.
Here it is in action…
Replacing the amber/red window on the laser module with a simple printed part…
which fits inside the housing and accepts a 6mm air line…
and centers a funnel-shaped shroud over the laser lens
I initially used a “new-style” Neje 30W laser module (which I physically broke a few days ago) for getting my initial dimensions but – alas! – the 40W Neje unit is slightly different. Note the lens assembly on the 40W (right) is offset from center and the 30W lens assembly (left) is centered.
This necessitated going back into Onshape and shifting stuff over a couple of millimeters and adjusting the wall thickness of the funnel… and the fixed-focus laser beam exits the 3mm opening pretty well centered. The conical tip extends below the body of the laser module by 15mm and seems to focus nicely at 5-6mm from the material surface.
If you’re interested, I can provide the Onshape design files and put the stl’s out on TV… I just need a little time to clean them up and figure out how to get back into my TV account. It’s been a welcome diversion and I’ve enjoyed getting back to doing something I enjoy…
– David