On today's makers mashup part one of our diy laser series. Today we're going to be working on
building our own laser cutter and this is a core xy laser cutter that we're going to be building
and for those of you that have been following the channel for a while you can see that this looks
remarkably like an x301 now if you're not familiar with the x301 it's a diy core xy 3d printer series
that we've done on this channel and there's a card up at the top so you can check that out
so for a while now i've wanted to put together a laser cutter i ultimately am going to want to get
a co2 laser i've used co2 lasers in the past and they work extremely well but they're cost
prohibitive and it's something that takes up more space in the shop and i wanted something that i
could just do some basic light engraving with so when i originally started off with this project i
thought i would create a brand new motion system probably a cartesian system and use that as the
basis for building a laser cutter so as i thought about that for a little bit i said to myself
why couldn't i use the same motion system that we use on the x301 so i started going down that path
and after a couple of iterations came up with this and what we've got here is essentially the x301
with the primary difference of there being four sets of feet or these corner brackets
that you would install in the back of the 301 i've installed on all four corners and created
some new stepper mounts that allow you to use these basically as feet now the feet
work great because what i did is i just applied some tpu to the bottom of this created tpu feet
and this stays in place really really well and the other benefit of reusing this motion system
was that i could really focus on what i wanted which was building the laser part of this project
and not have to worry about how to create the entire motion system and how i would set that up
i think it's definitely in my wheelhouse to be able to create that but i wanted to really start
working on this project right away and this was just a natural evolution so what i've got here
is a motion control system and it is really on an open frame so we can make this into anything
we're going to be doing this as a laser cutter to start but then what i'm also going to do
is make different heads so that way i can go ahead and attach a vinyl cutter or a plotter so
essentially by building this project you'll get three other projects out of it
all at the same time so in today's video part one we're going to be assembling the frame
now along with the frame we're also going to do the linear rails on here we'll install the
steppers and the belts and basically put together everything that you see here this
will get us ready for our next video which will focus on the electronics now i used marlin for the
firmware in the electronics which means if you're familiar with compiling marlin and using it this
will be a very simple project for you to do and it's something that you can get done in a weekend
so with all that said let's get to work we start this project by working with the four corners
and the feet we're gonna go ahead and install screws and we're also going to need ourselves a
calibration cube it's just a 20 by 20 cube that fits in here and fills the space we have our m5
screws and t-nuts we'll just push the extrusion up to the end and then we're going to want to loosely
tighten this don't over tighten it because when we get to the last one here you'll see that we'll
need it a little bit loose to go ahead and not break the plastic extruded parts that are here
at the corners once that's in place give it a good tighten and then we're done with the base frame
now we move on to the pulley towers we'll insert an m5 nut in here and i like to use a
screw because it's a little bit easier to get that nut inside there once it's pressed into place you
can just remove the screw afterwards and leave the nut inside now we need our m5 40 millimeter screw
and this will take a little bit of finesse slowly do each pulley and washer moving the screw up ever
so slightly until we get the full stack built here we'll have the two pulleys with one washer
in between and then that will go ahead and attach to the nut that we already placed in
our previous step be sure not to over tighten this as the pulleys need to spin freely finally we'll
insert our m5 screws and attach this to the base of the frame to do this we'll insert our m5 nut
into the hole here we'll flip everything over and then from there we will install
the pulley tower that we just created in the last step we'll do this on each side of our frame
now we're going to need six m5 screws and nuts and this will install our steppers to the front
of the frame we tighten these the same way we did the rear pulley towers and once it's in place the
main frame is done now let's continue with the installation of our motion system we start by
installing these 12 millimeter wide linear rails and we do that with m3 screws and i use every
other hole it's probably a little overkill but it adds rigidity overall to the design
with one rail in we'll install the other one on the opposite side
now we move on to the linear rail that will hold our carriage we'll start by inserting
some m5 nuts into these recesses using the same method we used before once we have the
nuts in on both of these parts then we'll insert the linear rail and prepare to put it on top
of our frame you may need to adjust how deep the rail goes into the slot but once you do these will
fit then right on top of the other set of linear rails making this portion of our carriage complete
we use some m3 screws to attach this to the top of the linear rail
the horizontal rail is secured with m3 screws and nuts
the pulley tower is a bit of a balancing act you'll place the 3d printed part followed by the
tooth pulley then the smooth pulley and then the other 3d printed part and all of this is secured
with two m5 screws be sure not to over tighten this as the pulleys need to spin freely now we
install the steppers into the stepper mounts i used 0.9 degree steppers because i wanted to have
a really high level of granularity for the laser and this is installed with these m3 screws and
washers no need to tighten these now we just want to put this in place and save the rest for the
belt now we're going to take our four tpu feet and we're going to put this on all four corners
this will keep our frame from slipping around i found some green cable wrap online that allows
me to match the style of the build and hide these wires nice and neat once we install
the stepper drive pulleys on each side our build is ready for us to route our belts
we start with the carriage block and this process begins by dropping some
m3 nuts into the carriage assembly and then we're going to drop some m3 screws into the carriage
plate that holds the belt we're going to attach this on both sides and leave them nice and loose
then we'll attach this to the carriage itself and we'll begin routing our belts
to route the belt you'll start on the left side of the carriage insert the belt and then you'll take
the belt and move it all the way around following the pulleys where the tooth part of the belt meets
up with the tooth part of the pulley once you make it around to the other side you're going
to take the smooth part of the belt and that will insert into the pulley stack here and come out the
other side which attaches over to the carriage don't forget to hook up the stepper in the front
that tooth portion of the belt meets up with the stepper once you've wrapped it around both sides
then we can begin to tighten things onto the carriage when you cut it make sure you leave
ample space so that way you can adjust the belt if necessary once we've made sure everything's
square we'll use the steppers to tighten the belt and we'll secure it down with these m3 screws
finally we'll make an adjustment here with the stepper pulley to make sure that the belt
itself is not hitting any of the plastic parts it should only be riding on the pulleys themselves
once that's done secure this by tightening the grub screws and we're complete with our build
so as you can see putting this together was really rather simple i think the most work out of all of
this was just simply printing the parts uh it did take a little bit of time to get all these
parts done but assembly was really really quick uh and then the other part that i think is really
important to note is make sure when you do this project that you get your frame square and you're
also making sure that when you attach the belt they have an equal length and that is square the
easiest way to tell that is to move this all the way back and make sure that you don't have gaps
between these left and right sides of the pulley towers if there's no gap there or even if there
is a gap moving and adjusting this one tooth at a time on one belt usually will solve that problem
and then you'll make sure that your whole frame is square now if you're watching this video and you
haven't assembled an x301 that's a very helpful tip for an x301 uh build as well because you need
to make sure that this is square otherwise things won't print properly or in this case cut properly
in our next video we're going to be covering the electronics and getting that all set up
we're going to use marlin for the firmware all the electronics are commodity electronics i used an
old skr version 1.3 you could use a melsie board for it so it really doesn't matter as long as it
can run marlin 2.0 you can use the same firmware i'll have that in a repo so you can download that
as well and get all the configurations for this just like we have for the x301 now the other key
thing to remember in building this is laser safety and we'll cover that when we do the electronics
it's really critical that if you're going to be building a laser cutter you take extra precautions
because you only have two eyes and i really want you to keep watching my videos so it's better if
you have both eyes able to do that so with that it's going to bring the end of today's video
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else so with that i want to say thanks again for watching and we'll see you all next time