In a quest to make more cool stuff, I have headed down the path of a fiber laser. I will use this to supplement my woodworking by working with challenge coins, small thin cuts for inlays, and glass and acrylic. Their capabilities are impressive!
I know lightburn from prior laser use and I wanted a fiber laser. That is the purpose for the thread. I have already purchased one, and I did a fair bit of research before doing so. I have not received it yet. You'll get the warts and all review as I set it up and learn the capabilities. My experience with fiber laswrs is generalized but there isn't a ton of good info out there.
Most common fiber lasers that people like us may be interested in are nm wavelength and are good for metals, some plastics, some acrylics, glass, stone, and the like. They are emphatically NOT for wood, which has a fair to middling chance of catching fire under the influence of a fiber laser.
A fiber laser is a rather different beast from a common diode laser like you may have seen or a common CO2 laser. Most fiber lasers are "Galvo" lasers, named for their galvanometers. They use a set of mirrors to "move" the laser beam around. The working area for the sort of fiber lasers in question here is quite small, but they work extremely fast. The working area is dictated by the lens you use, with a smaller lense allowing much more power to be brought to bear.
I ordered a 70x70 and 210x210mm lens. The 70x70 will be good for challenge coins, which are something I have received a lot of requests for. The 210x210 will be used for larger sheets being cut very finely, and for modification to gun frames. They also interface with "rotary" tools that incorporate a chuck and rotating axis powered by a stepper motor to do things like engrave designs on rings, tumblers, mugs, bracelets and the like.
I did a lot of price and comparison shopping. My conclusion was unless you have Trotec or greater money (starting 11-14k) you're getting a chinese laser. Make your peace with it. And the vast majority of the lasers are assembled from relatively generic parts other than the sources (sources being the box the laser issues from), which are made most commonly by JPT and Raycus.
Searching domestic sellers led me to Monport, Omtech, and Cloudray. There are many more, but those are the heaviest advertisers at present anyway. Their prices and accessories vary wildly, even for what appears to be about the same machine. I made some inquiries that led me to a company named "Hao Tian laser", which so far as I can discern is one of the OEM suppliers. I appreciated that their sales team was zero pressure, very helpful, and answered my questions. They spoke good English as well. Most other Chinese resellers of goods are pushy and annoying.
To place an order with "Hao Tian", you cannot do so from their warehouse or website directly. They use Alibaba (not aliexpress). When I decided on my desired machine (a 60 watt mopa laser by JPT, my lenses, my rotary, and some stencils for gun frames they threw in) they drew me up an invoice I paid through Alibaba. I also paid that through PayPal and used a credit card, so while I ate a CC processing fee, I am protected at multiple levels. My total cost including the CC fee was right at $.
I did find a coupon code on a website shortly after the fact and emailed them asking if I could use it (as when using invoices in alibaba it does not have a coupon window). They promptly paypalled me $100 back directly, which was pretty solid customer service. (Importation) taxes are included as well as shipping.
That is where I currently am. The order was placed on 10/30, and Alibaba claims it should be "dispatched" in 20 days. Most others I've spoken to state they got theirs in about 2 weeks, and the units are generally assembled at the time of the order.
I will update this on receipt and assembly and while I'm working on one or my rooms for this to go in you might be witness to a very stupid man operating an expensive laser on top of his ping pong table in the basement.
If anyone else has any experience with fiber lasers of this sort I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Personally I am just happy I will no longer need to strap guns to my cnc table to do my NFA engravings with a drag bit anymore!
ETA: updated 11/2 to note that my laser has already shipped. Hao Tian sent me pictures of the exact unit along with the calibrations for the individual lenses as well as my name on the label when they shipped.
Received it today. Order placed 10/30, dispatched 11/3, cleared customs 11/6, held ransom by UPS for about a week due to "severe weather events" in IL and NC that I guess I somehow overlooked. Crazy how often "severe weather" holds up UPS deliveries on perfectly nice days.
Either way, not bad. I am still not settled on where exactly to put it, but I'll try and get it unboxed and set up soon.
A quick unboxing.
The chinese crate it came in is sturdy. The entire package billed at 49kg, so a bit over 100 lbs.
When popping it open, you first get the plate that subtends the working area.
Under that is the actual laser source, controller, and scan head.
Under that, some boxes of accessories.
The accessories for me were my extra lens (210mm was installed, 70mm in the box), the rotary chuck (seriously hefty), Allen keys, some jig bars, a usb stick with some files, a pedal for repeated jobs, a USB cable, tooling for the chuck, and some laser glasses. It goes without saying but this laser vaporizes metals. Don't stare at it.
Last thing in the crate was the adjustment column you use to set the focus. This column is 50cm tall.
That will easily allow you to use 30x30cm lenses.
More to come, still have to find a place to set it up. It isn't a quiet unit but it needs to be tethered to a computer, and given that it's all in with the other tooling a $ machine, it's going to stay indoors in the climate control.
By no means have I had the chance to become proficient, but I have had a good deal of fun with the little time I've had to play with it so far.
Compared to a co2 and diode laser, which are relatively simple (you vary speed and power) there are many, many more variables with this variety of laser. As a MOPA variant as opposed to Q-switched, you also can alter pulse length, which I have quickly found makes a big difference in output. I've found myself easily able to cut thin stock which I've seen youtubers have some difficulty with on more conventional 50w q switched raycus lasers.
So for a fiber laser, you can alter speed, power, frequency, pulse width. The trade off in a galvo vs a gantry laser is massively faster speed vs larger area of coverage. On my 24w diode on my CNC, I can cover 48x33". On this with my largest lens I can cover about 12x12". Now on the other hand, how often do you even need that kind of coverage for metal marking? Not often.
Also, ensure you use fume extraction for these. I'm running an inline blower fan into a filter and also running an air purifier in the room. I intend to also fab a hookup and quick bracket that can just slide into an openwindow for ventilation, I just haven't gotten that far yet.
As a side note, wider lenses are far more forgiving with regards to focus length than narrow band lenses. The difference between no noticeable removal and all and "plasma cutter" with my 70mm lens is literally just a few millimeters. With the 210mm lens (which I am viewing as my general purpose lens) you have several millimeters of leeway.
One of my first misadventures was discovering the joys of stainless steel marking. Lightburn can generate excellent test grids to vary whatever features you may want to test. This one was done at far too much power, but you can see at one point in the test between q-pulse and interval I was able to get some colors- reds, blues, and greens. The next steps are to narrow that range of settings and then search even more in detail.
Incidentally and speaking of too much power, introducing too much power to a workpiece will cause it to bend.
Making a stout piece of stainless bend like this gives an idea of exactly how much juice this is putting out, and it is definitely not a toy.
One of the more practical uses for a laser marker like this is obliterating masking agents to give a photographic look. On glass, acrylics, painted tile, slate, and metals this can be a striking look. Here is an example of one doodle on a coated aluminum business card.
Goofy, but absolutely mesmerizing to watch. This was done at 10% power and millimeters per second speed. That is to say, pretty darn fast. Watching an image suddenly materialize like that is a very science fiction moment for sure.
As for cutting power, it's important to emphasize that these are not cutting machines... but they can do it in thin stock, and with very fine detail, if needed. The above surfing border collie is drawn on 0.5mm aluminum stock. That's sufficient to make fun metal stickers or the like. I am able to cut that material cleanly in 2 passes at 20khz, 90% power, 100mm per second speed, and 400 q pulse using a fairly wide angle lens (so not a highest power scenario).
One test (and probably not a wise one as I'm pretty sure zinc dust is fairly toxic) was to use it on pennies. A common industrial usage for fiber lasers is cleaning metal, particularly from rust. I went and raided the coin jar for nasty, grody, patina covered pennies. At very lower power and high speeds it would clean them quickly. It could be extremely beneficial for restoring metal parts with minimal material removal.
It also can cut pennies in half, which i found amusing if not useless.
While I am just scratching the surface with this tool and not set up as well as I would like yet (you might notice it's literally sitting on the floor of a room that doesn't even have baseboards yet) there are endless possibilities for this. Keepsakes, and engravings are very obvious, but being able to add accents to small metal pieces will really set off certain things I think.
It can be pretty fast or slower depending on parameters. Here's a true speed example I made a second ago (the stock used is the size of a business card). Forgive the shakiness as I just used my braced against my leg.
While the coloration has considerable room for improvement, its really just a test of concept.
As you determine the parameters for fineness and coarseness your desired settings can vary it greatly. In this case the "laser spot" size is about 0.08mm, and it's drawing a line every 0.05mm. Using the parameters I drew in lightburn, in this video it "drew" approximately "lines" to create this image.
Now, translating an image is generally slow, as the laser is traversing the entire area of its effect. Preferentially we would use a vector graphic and selectively fill or avoid filling parts. That means that in most professional usages (text, logos, etc) it is actually considerably faster than in creating imagery.
Setup time to usage was short. I am fairly well acquainted with lightburn, the software I use. Ezcad2 is a free option which I understand to be sort of a pain in the butt. It was included but i have never used it. By the time I had it plugged in and assembled, I installed the drivers on my computer (took seconds), installed the supplied configuration files for the laser (took seconds) and then I was ready to rock. Lightburn is quite user friendly. Galvo lasers in general are pretty user friendly- they even trace the part you're going to lase with a red laser before you start so you can set things up.
Here is a better example of a much more practical project. I'm sure many of us here can think of how to use something in this manner... and it also shows the red alignment laser.
Here's another neat party trick, although it's actually pretty useful.
One of the common industrial uses for fiber lasers is rust cleaning and removal. In industry they use a handheld gun, think Ghostbusters.
Here's an old, old plane someone gave me.
It's in awful shape. Here's the blade.
Here's the blade after about 15 seconds on the laser.
It might still be pitted, but it sure isn't rusty any more.
The plane body is an even crazier result.
Yep, that's just the powdered rust. Knocked off and sitting there. It can now be brushed off with your finger.
Also, you know what's crazy? I've never posted a YouTube video before, and now that short video of the state being cut out has almost views.
So, while I can't recommend buying one of these to clean up the sorts of planes people pay $5 for to decorate with... smoke em if you got em, I suppose.
So, I know said this would be a warts and all review... but there really weren't any warts. Haotian shipped my laser fast and at the best price around. I got it quickly and it was packed great. Setup was super easy and it works perfectly as they precalibrated the lenses. There seriously wasn't a single hitch with the process. Everything works, and works as it should. I'm not a newbie to lasers but this is my first fiber laser and I found it to be a very simple and intuitive experience.