El Beast - Initial design phase, comments and critique welcomed!

**routercnc** · 18-10-2017

Lovely work there Zeeflyboy. A machine has to function but no harm in making it look nice along the way!

I've hit a slow spot on my build and other commitments need sorting so looks like you are going to finish well before me. Good progress keep it up.

**qmarjov** · 25-10-2017

Hi Zeeflyboy
did you calculate? How much did you pay for everything?

BR//

Mario

**Zeeflyboy** · 12-01-2018

Sorry, qmarjov - I don't yet have numbers to share for cost. I will do a rough estimate nearer the end though.

As you guys may have noticed, not much has happened last month or two. What with christmas and work commitments I haven't had time to do anything substantial on the project... The extra work related stuff should abate mid february and that is when I expect to pick this project back up more in earnest, though I may continue to do little bits and bobs along the way.

The reason for this post is that I just got a cool new toy to play with and thought it was too cool not to share the results.

When I say "I", I actually bought this for the wife so she could start a little home business to allow her to turn her hobby into a little side income stream. Of course, I get to play with it so I'm just going to count it as one of my toys!

So what is this new toy? Why a 45w CO2 laser of course!

We've actually done quite a few little test projects over the last day or two (including some cool stuff like etching slate coasters) to test out the machine and get the wife acquainted with operating it. But today I thought I'd have a little play with the sort of thing I actually want to use it for:

I tweaked my Logo design and did a quick test in wood to see how it looks:

Decided it looked nice, so went hunting down some anodised aluminium to try etching.... only thing I had to hand were the thorlabs angle brackets. I popped it and and had a guess at some numbers, came out beautifully! I had to remove the honeycomb tray as the brackets are a little thick to sit on top of that, so that is why the bracket is sat on some chopping boards. This job took about 4 minutes to run through.

I'm pretty ecstatic with the result there.... definitely opens up some new possibilities in terms of finishing items I make once I've got the anodising rig setup and working.

Aaaaanyway, back to real life work! Sad times.

**Nickhofen** · 12-01-2018

Nice logo and the laser you bought is a good move for someone who wants to start a home business!

**Zeeflyboy** · 12-01-2018

Well we shall see how it works out, I'm not expecting to be able to retire any time soon but I'm hoping she can make enough money to pay off the expense of the machine/maintenance and generate a little income from something she enjoys doing. Obviously this stuff is becoming more and more accessible so there are a lot of options out there for people looking for bespoke laser created items but I do feel its the sort of low volume thing that fits a "cottage industry" type operation rather well. I think going around and getting some tie-ins with local wedding dress shops and flower shops etc would be a good way of generating some business in a crowded online market.

But more importantly, I get to play with a frikkin laser!

**Desertboy** · 12-01-2018

Originally Posted by Zeeflyboy

Well we shall see how it works out, I'm not expecting to be able to retire any time soon but I'm hoping she can make enough money to pay off the expense of the machine/maintenance and generate a little income from something she enjoys doing. Obviously this stuff is becoming more and more accessible so there are a lot of options out there for people looking for bespoke laser created items but I do feel its the sort of low volume thing that fits a "cottage industry" type operation rather well. I think going around and getting some tie-ins with local wedding dress shops and flower shops etc would be a good way of generating some business in a crowded online market.

But more importantly, I get to play with a frikkin laser!

what size cutting area has it got?

**Zeeflyboy** · 12-01-2018

20"x11.5" I believe, although in theory as long as the material isn't too thick (the slots are quite narrow) you can use the passthrough slots to feed a longer piece of material 20" wide through the machine though I haven't tried obviously.

I believe the plan eventually is for it to take care of the passthrough automagically using the cameras for alignment and continuation of the pattern but that isn't available yet in the beta software. I believe it can be achieved manually you just need some way of indexing and aligning.