Jump to content
 

Recommended Posts

Hi, I purchased this 50W Chinese laser in March via e-bay. I paid using Pay-pal which provides some hope of recovering your money if you need to.  The 100Kg machine arrived in a van, driven by a girl who had been sent out without handling equipment.  So the first problem was to get it out of the van.  Who said 10 1/4" gauge track would be a useless investment? If it had not been for my length of prefabricated track  that cutter would still be in the van.  Down the ramp and on the ground and 56 coach screws later the 65Kg uncased machine was on a trolley ready to be taken to the laser room. The room was an emptied bedroom of a child long since departed the nest. Before plugging it in a couple of weeks were spent making a bench by a window for fume extraction and sourcing a water tank.  If anyone wants to follow my example make sure you view some of the 100+ You tube videos made by Russ

This will open your eyes to the plus and minus of these machines and most importantly get you started safely.

post-10830-0-22703100-1494336124_thumb.jpg

 The main problem with these machines is that they are potentially overdriven.  ie more power is supplied to the laser than it can use so this rapidly causes the tube to degrade.  You must not use the software power settings as any guide to how much power is going through the tube.  It is essential to fit a milliammeter in the RETURN (Cathode) of the laser tube.  There are several You Tube videos on how to this SAFELY. The maximum safe current in the return for a longlife in this wattage of  tube is 16mA.

post-10830-0-69447700-1494337330.jpg

This shows the Maplin enclosure with the mA meter, and coolant water temperature probe ( both£3 off e-bay) The water tank contains a cheap aquarium heater for winter use and to avoid termal shock to the laser tube.  It is best to keep the coolant between 15C and 25C.  Again if the temperature of the coolant goes much above 30C the tube loses power and can suffer permanent damage.

The software that comes with the machine is called RDworks.  Many users find it a bit wanting but I have not.  It is limited as a drawing tool but is essential for processing the drawing to drive the laser.  It allows different coloured lines on your drawing to either be cut or engraved.  It allows bit maps and vectors to be combined in composing one cutting tool. Hidden from view is has some neat tricks. It allows the machine to optimise the cutting path for speed. It allows you to cut on the line or inside or outside it. The Kerf of the cutter is about 0.15mm-0.2mm.(the focussed laser beam is 0.1mm) SO it is possible to make parts that fit correctly.

So what will it do? It will cut paper, mount card,plywood up to 6mm, MDF up to 6-8mm, acrylic (pespex) up to 6mm, These are single pass cuts  at speed of 100-30mm/s for paper and cards, MDF 35-5mm/s depending on thickness and about the same for perspex.

The original drawing is done in Freehand and old program like Illustrator. The files are drawn  as hairline, exported as AI files into RD works where they can be further worked on eg they can be selected, re-scaled, coloured for different cutting protocols. In short it all worked. 

My first project, cut in 2mm, 3mm and 5mm perspex was to make a kit for a quarry slab truck in 16mm scale.

post-10830-0-75109400-1494338594.jpg

post-10830-0-46858100-1494338821_thumb.jpg

The laser cut parts were assembled with Plastic Weld, The wheels are Binnie on shortened axles and the details- coupling hooks Binnie, nut and bolt castings-Cambrian.  Time to cut the parts 2 minutes. Now that is much quicker and cheaper than any other way to make a quantity of wagons. The only kit part that needed a jig and a bit of thought was the through wagon draw bar. The cost of the perspex per wagon is about £1.

  • Like 8
Link to post
Share on other sites

Very nice!

 

I contemplated a Chinese CO2 before I bought my Emblazer- but I really wanted something small and plug and play. However, you were obviously aware of the need to prepare and commission the machine properly yourself beforehand, which is excellent.

 

It sounds like a really useful Tool! (I still don't have room for one Though! )

 

10 1/4 track is NEVER wasted.....!

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi, Giles I have been a very keen follower of your modelling. A superb redition of a Garratt in Roy Links mag, the paint finish you achieved really set the model apart. You are partly to blame for my 50W purchase.  I have very little time for my own modelling being in retirement my comercial model making has priority. When I first read your posts you also seem a guy with a great deal going on in their life so I was very interested when you make the transition from static grass to laser.  The blue light Emblaser seems to achieve a great deal with so few Watts.  The software is more substantial I think than the RDworks. My choice of laser type was guided by a pal who is employed making models and mounts for one of the great museums in the UK. His workshop has a nice 40W Epilog machine.  A CO2 laser but in a different league to the glass tube in the Chinese machine in terms of duty cycle and lifetime. However they do share speed  of cut.  I do not feel quite so guilty standing 10 minutes by the machine while it cuts out 400 O scale Spanish tile blanks as I would standing for 20 minutes.  You seem to be developing a tremendous skill in making brickwork.  The nearest I come to file size so far are A4 sheets of palm fronds.  I need 2 tall Chilean Oil Palms for the station area of my South American railway I build in my holidays. I will post some more bits and bobs I have been cutting for myself.  When I think I am on top of the machine I will try to make some 16mm stock kits.  Some Gwalior Light Railway coaches will be the first project.  Thanks for the comment, regards.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 5 weeks later...

Hi, well since last writing I have had a disaster with the laser cutter. BANG was the start. A very loud bang which turned out to be the main fuse and the power supply fuse going.  Right in the middle of cutting for no reason at all.  The ebay suppliers warranty proved useless and I am now seeking some redress through Pay-pal which again is grinding on very slowly.  I did solve my problem though.  I purchased a new power supply and fitted it.  SO far it is still working but I did have to re-find all the best powers and feed rates for cutting. What I have done with the machine is illustrated below. Project (1) was to make a reasonable attempt at building a model of Arica Station in Chile.

post-10830-0-46158200-1496940644_thumb.jpg

There are only 3 or 4 photos of the building. Using the children to get a scale I came up with a main building 44 feet long, 16 feet wide and 14 foot high. The tower top being about 36 feet above ground level. Below is a picture of the model I made. The windows are different - a pal had purchased some Grandt line windows in the US for me.

post-10830-0-02002100-1496940979.jpg

 It seems to have got the look I think and the extraordinary canopy supports seem about right.  Anyway I do not think anybody will come up to me with the architects drawing in the near future.  The original was destroyed in a tidal wave sometime in the 1900s I believe.

The next project (2) was to make a few hundered channel tiles (Roman Tiles)  I had cut a paper pattern from a tile in France. I drew the tile up from this and came up with an A4 sheet that gave we 300 or so in 6 minutes of laser cutting. First I had painted the card both sides with emulsion paint. When dry I left it for  few days with a weight on top to get it flat. It was then laser cut. The tiles were very effectively weathered by the smoke in the laser.  Before use each tile was curved round a needle file handle.  The wall itself was thick hard foam embossed with large blocks to represent Adobe. The wall was then tapered at the top and covered with Gyproc filler. It dried to look like the desired lime render and in a few places this was abraded to reveal the underlying blocks.

post-10830-0-30299000-1496942059.jpg

The next photo shows the wall end and the baggage/ goods enclosure together with the endview of the station building (compare to the prototype above) The baggage enclosure again was a couple of minutes cutting on the laser.

The last holiday project (3) was to build 3 Palm trees that the station area required.  Drawing the archetype palm frond did take a long time (about 2 1/2 hours) but once done simple manipulation in the drawing program allowed a lot of derivitives to be created.  The fronds were cut 12 at a time on an A4 sheet of thin card (cutting time was 15 minutes) The card was then sprayed with car primer and a dark green car paint. The frond was then stuck along its stem onto florist's wire using gel super glue.  The frond could then be bent and the card folded  etc to give a pleasing form.  The trunk was thick electrical cable wrapped in sisal string, raffia, and coated with plaster. The base and top were built up in wood filler from photos to get the right shapes. The fronds were inserted into pre-drilled holes and retained with super glue.  The results are quite lifelike I think.  The fact that each frond has up to 100+ leaflets helps. The palm  behind the station is about a foot tall and has about 40 fronds,the nearer about 30 fronds only possible because the laser does'nt get bored cutting them out. The resulting complexity of the model does a good job to con the eye and brain I think.

post-10830-0-42040800-1496943108_thumb.jpg

So in spite of the bang I am getting to like my chinese laser.  It certainly lets you make things that go together, Make things that would be difficult to cut out with scissors or a knife and engrave (station name plates) It is a precise machine and seems to hold its precision over the whole 500 x 300mm cutting area.

  • Like 5
Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi, well since last writing I have had a disaster with the laser cutter. BANG was the start. A very loud bang which turned out to be the main fuse and the power supply fuse going.  Right in the middle of cutting for no reason at all.  The ebay suppliers warranty proved useless and I am now seeking some redress through Pay-pal which again is grinding on very slowly.  I did solve my problem though.  I purchased a new power supply and fitted it.  SO far it is still working but I did have to re-find all the best powers and feed rates for cutting. What I have done with the machine is illustrated below. Project (1) was to make a reasonable attempt at building a model of Arica Station in Chile.

attachicon.gifarica station bw.jpg

There are only 3 or 4 photos of the building. Using the children to get a scale I came up with a main building 44 feet long, 16 feet wide and 14 foot high. The tower top being about 36 feet above ground level. Below is a picture of the model I made. The windows are different - a pal had purchased some Grandt line windows in the US for me.

attachicon.gifpaca6.jpg

 It seems to have got the look I think and the extraordinary canopy supports seem about right.  Anyway I do not think anybody will come up to me with the architects drawing in the near future.  The original was destroyed in a tidal wave sometime in the 1900s I believe.

The next project (2) was to make a few hundered channel tiles (Roman Tiles)  I had cut a paper pattern from a tile in France. I drew the tile up from this and came up with an A4 sheet that gave we 300 or so in 6 minutes of laser cutting. First I had painted the card both sides with emulsion paint. When dry I left it for  few days with a weight on top to get it flat. It was then laser cut. The tiles were very effectively weathered by the smoke in the laser.  Before use each tile was curved round a needle file handle.  The wall itself was thick hard foam embossed with large blocks to represent Adobe. The wall was then tapered at the top and covered with Gyproc filler. It dried to look like the desired lime render and in a few places this was abraded to reveal the underlying blocks.

attachicon.gifview wall palm.jpg

The next photo shows the wall end and the baggage/ goods enclosure together with the endview of the station building (compare to the prototype above) The baggage enclosure again was a couple of minutes cutting on the laser.

The last holiday project (3) was to build 3 Palm trees that the station area required.  Drawing the archetype palm frond did take a long time (about 2 1/2 hours) but once done simple manipulation in the drawing program allowed a lot of derivitives to be created.  The fronds were cut 12 at a time on an A4 sheet of thin card (cutting time was 15 minutes) The card was then sprayed with car primer and a dark green car paint. The frond was then stuck along its stem onto florist's wire using gel super glue.  The frond could then be bent and the card folded  etc to give a pleasing form.  The trunk was thick electrical cable wrapped in sisal string, raffia, and coated with plaster. The base and top were built up in wood filler from photos to get the right shapes. The fronds were inserted into pre-drilled holes and retained with super glue.  The results are quite lifelike I think.  The fact that each frond has up to 100+ leaflets helps. The palm  behind the station is about a foot tall and has about 40 fronds,the nearer about 30 fronds only possible because the laser does'nt get bored cutting them out. The resulting complexity of the model does a good job to con the eye and brain I think.

attachicon.gifstation palms view.jpg

So in spite of the bang I am getting to like my chinese laser.  It certainly lets you make things that go together, Make things that would be difficult to cut out with scissors or a knife and engrave (station name plates) It is a precise machine and seems to hold its precision over the whole 500 x 300mm cutting area.

 

Hi,

 

Which model Laser cutter did you buy?, you seem to have made some great looking models.

 

Regards

 

Nick

Link to post
Share on other sites

We used to have one of these blue chinese lasers at Richmondmakerlabs http://www.richmondmakerlabs.uk/ , but the power supply repeatedly failed, and a member ended up buying a whole new machine, however the old unit went via Reading hackspace http://rlab.org.uk/ to the Surrey and Hants  makerspace https://www.shmakerspace.org/ and they managed to fix the power supply - it might be worth trying to connect to them to see if they have any suggestions about what mught be wrong.

 

Jon

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi, Nick and Jon. First the machine I purchased was from e-bay I will not name the e-bay seller until my dispute with them via Pay-pal is resolved. I think I am on the verge of anger with pay-pal since they said they would arbitrate and give me their decision on June 7th and they have now put this back to July2nd!. My issue was the failed power pack. The seller stated the machine had a three year warranty, but it was meaningless, the postage they wanted for the replacement power pack (£70) was £5 less than what they were sellinga new power pack for! I purchased another from a UK seller. A 40w supply and so far it is working OK. The machine was good value however. It was correctly set up and had an electric lift table. It cost £1060 inc p and p. So far I am happy with it but when the power supply goes it is a big bang and my heart certainly missed a beat!  THe machineis accurate and the RD works software that comes with it is good. It imports Adobe illustrator files with no scaling problems, I regard it as well up to the job of driving the machine.  Further the RD works software can work in terms of cutting with both vector and bitmap information simultaneously, integrating the information into a cutting/engraving plan.

I would only consider purchase though after taking time to watch some/most of the You tube videos on the Chinese 50W laser cutter made by Russ Sadler.  There is also a very helpful support group for the machine to be found at RDworks lab .com forum.(you join by invitation) The site has available an English (not Chinglish) version of the RD works manual on the forum.

Jon thank you so much for that piece of information. I am starting to contact them.  I have had help from some guys in the US and Holland with the power pack.  They had a list of parts most likely to break.  So beside replacing the fuse I have just replaced the rectifier chip that had also blown but alas it all went bang again when the repaired unit  was plugged in. At the moment I hav'nt got the time to replace the fuse, test the rectiier, and replace them before finding what else has blown.  Even with buying the parts from China the cost soon mounts up. It would be great to get a settlement from pay-pal then at least I could buy another power supply and keep it as a spare.Regards

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi Jon, I have tried to get in touch with Surrey and Hants makerspace through Slack. I have to admit, so far, I am too stupid to work out how to do it.  Is there a simple way I can e-mail them. Regards.

See your personal messages for an email address to try.

 

Jon

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Hi, well since last writing I have had a replacement power supplly fail suddenly but gently.  Since no fuses went I think it needs a new fly back transformer so I will try to fix it soon.  In the mean time I have been very busy building steam engines but did find a couple of hours to re-fit the original home repaired power supply. Crossing fingers I turned on the power and it worked.  So that is a learning curve knocked on the head until it fails again.

Not having much time to play I decided I would try and make a gift for a pal.  I wondered if I could make him some O scalish bracken. His railway has started to grow scenery and I thought some ferns and bracken would be an interesting addition.  I decided to cut the shapes from 110g paper that was green in colour. I would then, using gel super glue, attach the bracken to a thin copper wire.  Spray it with car paint to give it some strength and then twist and form the stems to shape.  The photos show how I got on.

post-10830-0-06614000-1501603671.jpg

To start with the parts are very fine. The whole cut out is 3 foot high in scale so much of the detail is sub-millimeter.  To draw it up for cutting I cheated. I slapped a frond down on the A3 scanner. Converted the scan to a B and W image. Then used the trace tool and simplify path tool to get a reasonable  outline trace. The final stage was to go over the image editing it without losing too much character (I hope!). The first attempt at a cut was OK ish. Alas many of the tiny details were vapourised no matter what power and speed combitations were tried. I then had a lucky break  I was watching a You tube video on CNC plasma cutting steel by an artisan.  To minimise fumes in his workshop he covered the steel with 1 cm of water.  His technique worked and had other advantages too. I wondered if I could try laser cutting wet paper.

  post-10830-0-26037700-1501603753_thumb.jpgpost-10830-0-35234800-1501603779_thumb.jpg

Answer- a total YES. NO charring. NO vapourisation of tiny details and the paper held enough strength to be picked off the steel cutting bed I made (I use small magnets to hold card/paper flat) leaving the tiny parts behind.  Cutting speed is increased and so is the power possible to use. So cutting these large files takes 50s dry paper/ 18s wet.  I think this might be a valuable technique for making such small parts commercially.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Hi, since last posting the laser has had the repaired power pack refitted, the spare one gave up quite quickly.  I think this time it is not the board but a failed flyback transformer.  I will another transformer and fit it sometime.  I have started a new project with the cutter.  I had a sudden desire to build a model of the first train that ran nearby on the Deeside Railway.(Scale O FS)  The locomotive is still being drawn up so I can cut patterns for the engraving machine but the first coach has been realised.  The coach was built by Joseph Wright in 1859 and is a 3 compartment saloon first.

                                                         post-10830-0-42779700-1508783469.jpg                                           

The material used is card, mount board for the floor and inner wall and three layers of 400 micron card for the panelled exterior.  I cut the components and then shellaced them.  Assembly was with shellac too and the model above  has been coated lightly with car primer.  I am quite pleased with the "sharpness" of the model. If you discount the cost of the laser this is a very cheap way to build stock.  The surface to be painted looks good. It will be interesting comparing the card coach with etched coaches I have.

  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

Hi, at last back in the workshop. My mum died( aged 99) a couple of hours after I posted the above so this strand has a bit of a sentimental value to me. 

The latest project using the laser was to  build the first of a rake of coaches supplied to the Gwalior Light Railway in the late 1890s. The first problem was that there are no known drawings that survive so it had to be drawn.  There are however just enough photos and one known measurement a width of 6 feet 3 inches. A working drawing was produced and tweaked until it "looked right". The drawing also became the origin of the cutting files for the laser. The photo of this coach is in Railways of the Raj by Satow and Desmond

post-10830-0-86257400-1520247489_thumb.jpg

It is an odd coach, only being entered from one end. It had no glazed windows only venetian shutters. Like many coaches on this period in India it had permanent sunshades and a double roof.

post-10830-0-91061300-1520247542.jpg

The coach body is in 1mm laminated card, the tumblehome formed in a press made from thick aluminium, The frame is cut in thick perspex and detailed with lace pin rivets. The double roof is made from aluminium and perspex. The shutters are made from laminations of thin card stepping the layers by 0.4mm to get the impression of slanting slats. 

post-10830-0-50128000-1520247592_thumb.jpg

The bogies are Swift Sixteen and are of a near identical type to those fitted to the coach. Painting was a few coats of car primer and finish coats of acrylic sprayed at the finish with Gamesworkshop "purity seal" satin varnish.

SInce the basic design was used for all the coaches Kerr Stuart supplied it should be easy to alter the cutting tools to build the additional coaches in the prototype photo I have included. The side sunshades have been made and fitted since I took the photos.

post-10830-0-06850600-1520247654.jpg

  • Like 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...