2025 Laser Cutter Update

2025 Laser Cutter Update

Been a long time since Rock'n'Roll

Busy doing other stuff - life, making stuff, doom-scrolling Mastodon, that kind of thing. I was asked to show some of the stuff I've been making, and I thought the easiest thing to do was gett off my arse and do the first blog post in like forever. So here we are. I'm going to keep this less wordy than usual - just pics and a comment (we'll see how that works out).

First, the laser itself. I might end up repeating myself here, but I don't think I've actually blogged about the upgrades I've done, so here we go…

New laser module

I was having trouble cutting even quite thin materials with the 5 Watt output laser that the S30 came with, so I upgraded to a 20 Watt one. That was a bit of a project on its own - I bought a second hand one on ebay (caveat emptor and all that) and it didn't work - the cooling fans were dead. I had to jump through a lot of hoops with the ebay vendor and the manufacturer, but they eventually sent me new fans, and then after more back and forth, the right ones! The first ones they sent were for a newer model and didn't fit.

Presents and stuff

Once I had that, I was able to start easily cutting 3mm plywood, and a bunch of presents for family members followed.

A birthday present for one of my sisters - a memorial to her dog who had passed away recently:

An Autism Infinity Loop badge for myself (I mean, why not?)

A siamese cat light for another sister's birthday, because she has quite a few of them:

A rocket light for my youngest son's bedroom wall, which I designed and cut, and then didn't get round to completing for months. This is the shell not glued together yet:

Then, suddenly christmas was upon us, and I made a load of presents for family:

Laser cutter expansion kit

I was getting frustrated with the small size of things I could work on - I want to be able to make big wall art, and big objects. Eventually, I got the expansion kit for my laser, taking it from the original 400x400mm work area, to a whopping 895x895mm area. This also meant that I'd have to upgrade the workbench it stands on, and the fume extractor hood that sucks the smoke out. Another big project - using as much recycled materials as possible.