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Wiring, Hoses, and Testing

A project log for Building Another Laser Cutter

Building a laser cutter around a Coherent GEM-50L laser

jerry-biehlerJerry Biehler 03/06/2021 at 08:540 Comments

I got the laser connected to the mill and created a second profile in Mach to run the laser. Configured the Kflop output board to run the solenoids for air and to turn the laser on. Just using M3/M5 for laser on/off and M8 for nozzle air. Screwed the CDA (Clean Dry Air filter) to the wall and plumbed that into the air supply. Beam expander is installed and adjusted.

Ran into one issue. My mill is incredibly electrically noisy from the servo drives. I had the exact same thing happen with my telescope mount. Its causing the microcontroller to trigger randomly and turning on the laser. Needless to say not good. I threw in a couple .1 uf caps across the inputs and that seems to eliminated that problem.

Playing around I did find something interesting, I can actually cut thin metal. I managed to cut some .005" stainless and made holes in .015 steel. 

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