New machine on the way

**alboy** · 09-01-2017

Hi Karl,

well petty much as I expected really, required a bit of tuning and adjustment but it is a Chinese machine so these jobs are normally required. I am hoping to put a video review up soon, time permitting.

The first issue was a nasty clonking sound when raising and lowering the bed which resulted in the bed not moving on one side, easily rectified by removing the bed and motor transmission where the pulley on the motor wasn't tightened properly.
The second issue was the laser alignment, spent a while aligning all the mirrors and tube, again this is generally required on most Chinese machines.

When testing the power output of the laser it would seem that the max output is 90w when used as per the tube manufacturers maximum amperage of 29 milliamp. Could probably get more from it but then the life of the tube would be seriously shortened.

So far have cut laser ply 3mm, cut and engraved 2,3,5 & 6mm acrylic, card, paper, 18mm softwood. The machine seems to have trouble with anything above 5mm ply which is a bit surprising but this may be down to the lens supplied. I have ordered new mirrors and lenses as I guessed the ones supplied with the machine would not be of the highest quality, this would seem to be the case when testing the laser power output between the mirrors and the final lens.

Considering the price of the machine it is generally a little better than I expected, all the wiring is neat and tidy, all earthed. There is a water flow sensor that stops the machine from working if coolant flow is not detected, not usually found on budget models.
The extractor fan is not too bad but you will still get an odour escaping so I would only use the machine in a workshop or garage and not in the house, especially when cutting acrylic.
The machine did vibrate and rattle a bit but that was only because there are no rubber seals around the opening panels, fixed that with some rubber draught excluder for £5.

The air pump that comes with the machine is not really powerful enough if you are cutting anything other than thin acrylic, not a problem for me as I have taken the air feed direct from my workshop compressor.

the RDworks software that it comes supplied with works ok but I only really use it to output the work to the laser I generally use illustrator, corel or aspire for the design work. You load the files in to the machine by either USB pen or direct connect via an ethernet cable i find the ethernet the easiest to do and very easy to set up. you can control he machine from a PC using the ethernet connection but jogging the head around is slow with quite a delay so I tend to use the machine's control panel for that.

it would appear that the manufacturer (KEHUI) have gone out of business which is probably why there are quite a few of these machines at a reasonable price. My machine will be used in a production environment but only for lighter duty cutting and engraving and I purchased this one as I needed one quickly. If I had more time I would probably go for a Thunder laser as they are equipped for a heavier duty cycle with servo motors and automatic focusing, although the manual focusing on my machine is very easy and takes seconds and is pretty much standard on Chinese machines.

Again considering the cost of the laser £2,155 delivered there's is not much to complain about. when the laser tube finally loses power as they all do over time (especially if over driven by too high amperage) I shall probably replace it with a better quality tube and power supply. but the current tube is doing the job ok until that point.

If you are contemplating purchasing a laser and it is a Chinese one, then the one essential upgrade you will need to do is fit an ammeter so that you can be sure you are not putting too many amps through the laser tube.

Hope this helps, need to know any more just ask :-)

Al

**Boyan Silyavski** · 09-01-2017

Wow, you did quite a job on it. Update us please when you have the new optics, about what it could cut i mean.

**PAULRO** · 07-02-2017

Hi Al, that's impressive,
my son has signed up to buy a glowforge ( a waste of time and money i think)i'm hoping to change his mind so i'm researching options for him. he has a fledgling architectural company started and wanted a laser for model building. i finished a course in cnc/laser cutting sometime back and can see the potential for model building. the course did not include any maintenance or optics setup so i'm wondering is it much of hassle? any info would be greatly appreciated. also is there a chiller required for the tube. and if so , is it supplied? i seem to remember a water chiller to cool the laser tube on the course i did ( trotec laser, lasersaur laser) . i heard that a air jet is also required to stop the material from catching fire, is this true? i spoke to a laser owner near me and he uses an air jet on the material being cut to prevent fire. last but not least , is there an extraction method for the fume supplied? sorry for all the questions but i'm trying to get as much info about the machine you bought because it looks a bargain and i am putting together a costing to convince my son.

paulro

**Davek0974** · 07-02-2017

Theres lots of laser stuff on youtube - optics setup, tuning cheap machines etc.

Yes you will need air blast, not so much for fire prevention but to keep the front optic clear of the muck thats produced when cutting. Most of the smaller machines use a large aquarium pump so no great pressure is needed here.Water cooling for small <50W machines seems to be just a small pump in a bucket of water!

Air extract is needed or at least a very good idea, especially if cutting plastics, usually they come with a small fan but seems most people duct it outside and fit a bigger fan.

**PAULRO** · 07-02-2017

cheers Davek, they look a great bargain compared to the epilogues and trotecs which are very expensive.

**Davek0974** · 07-02-2017

Yep, i was thinking of getting one myself at some stage.

**John S** · 09-02-2017

My lad has just bought one of these from Ebay and the usual Portsmouth delivery which must be true as it arrived in 3 days.

It's the big version of the A3 50w one that I have which has given virtually no trouble in the three years I have owned it.

I was tempted to sell mine and get one of these but can't do it with moving to a smaller house. not even sire where my 50w one is going to go, tempted to put a lightweight workshop in the attic, can get away with it as it's an old Victorian house.

**Davek0974** · 06-03-2017

Any pictures or progress reports yet? :)

Just been watching some of the Sarbar videos and got me thinking to building my own machine, that fell flat when i realised that there was no way to ever put that amount of parts - motors, drives, psu's, controller, lenses, mirrors, motion work etc together for anywhere near what these machines cost on eBay, it's just impossible.

A far better option is really to buy one and fine tune it I feel.

Now, if i can only find a reason to get one ........

**alboy** · 07-02-2017

Originally Posted by PAULRO

Hi Al, that's impressive,
my son has signed up to buy a glowforge ( a waste of time and money i think)i'm hoping to change his mind so i'm researching options for him. he has a fledgling architectural company started and wanted a laser for model building. i finished a course in cnc/laser cutting sometime back and can see the potential for model building. the course did not include any maintenance or optics setup so i'm wondering is it much of hassle? any info would be greatly appreciated. also is there a chiller required for the tube. and if so , is it supplied? i seem to remember a water chiller to cool the laser tube on the course i did ( trotec laser, lasersaur laser) . i heard that a air jet is also required to stop the material from catching fire, is this true? i spoke to a laser owner near me and he uses an air jet on the material being cut to prevent fire. last but not least , is there an extraction method for the fume supplied? sorry for all the questions but i'm trying to get as much info about the machine you bought because it looks a bargain and i am putting together a costing to convince my son.

paulro

Hi Paulro,
Glad to see another Irish based member on the forum,

The machine I have, would I class it as a bargain, well yes. The reason this brand of machine is appearing at bargain prices is because the company that makes them have gone out of business, I really wouldn't let that stop you from buying one if you so wished because any spare parts needed are easily obtained.

Now you do have to take in to account the fact that this is a chinese machine and you will probably have to tinker with the setup and adjustments and probably replace some consumables for better quality ones, such as the mirrors and lens but the are not expensive.

The machine I have came with a huge extractor fan that mounts outside of the machine and connects by a large bore flexible pipe. Fume extraction is very important, some fumes created on certain items can be very unpleasant and toxic, I vent the fumes outside through the workshop wall.

There is an air pump supplied that supplies sufficient flow to ensure there is positive pressure in the cutting nozzle (stops smoke damage to the lens and prevents material being cut from combusting) for cutting things like acrylic but better airflow is required to help deeper cutting on material such as ply and mdf.

The coolant method for this machine is an aquarium style pump that I have in a large container filled with 20 litres of deionised water fine so far but then again it never gets that warm in Ireland does it :-)

The machine also have a coolant flow sensor that prevents the machine from operating if it detects no coolant flow.

The optics are not that difficult to align. If you want to see some very informative videos on youtube then search for the Sarbar multimedia channel, excellent info and tutorials from Russ.

Any more questions just ask, if you want to have a look at my machine I am based in Roscommon.

Cheers

Al

**PAULRO** · 07-02-2017

cheers for the quick reply allboy, i'm getting all the puzzle pieces together at the mo. but i'll surely check back with you if that's o.k. it's good to know that your up and running successfully. the more info i have the better so i can persuade my son to go in this direction. thanks again.