New laser cutter

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My new laser cutter arrived at the start of last week, I feel a little guilty for not posting it sooner especially as I've been teasing it on Twitter all week but here it is, in all it's glory in a single post.
It's a 500x300mm cutting area with a 30W metal RF tube. Everything about this machine is designed for speed and in quick initial testing I've managed to take it up to 1000mm/s and it seems to run fine without skipping steps.





The laser head is super light weight and the belts are nice and thick which helps to avoid bounce when changing direction.



Mirror 1 has a beam combiner for the red dot light, another bit of weight off the gantry.



Proper linear screws on the Z axis make for very smooth vertical motion and inductive limit switches on all axis to avoid mechanical wear.


Finally the laser itself is a 30W metal RF tube. There are a lot of websites which offer information about Glass vs Metal tubes, now I have both I can compare to see which is best.


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