Tonight I machined a nice little heatsink to replace the one that I drilled out too large. This one is a solid block of aluminum that I salvaged from some machine that was being junked. It should work well enough without fins, for my purposes at least. I also made a hole for a setscrew and tapped it. The whole thing turned out nicely and I like how it looks - clean and professional. The Aixiz housing goes in the hole and is held in place by the setscrew.
I also manufactured a stand for the laser. You say, "A
stand?" Yes, a stand. When I was building this, I realized that this must be the most unconventional way of building a laser cutter. In nearly every other machine, the laser (or rather its beam, reflected by mirrors) moves. My machine, due to its genesis as a CNC machine, moves the platform, not the laser. This is somewhat annoying for multiple reasons. One of these is that I may have to further modify the code I am porting to make it work with my unusual setup. But, I am sure I will make it work!
I may eventually paint this to make it look nicer. Additionally, I discovered that my laser can cut into black craft foam, slice a green ribbon in two, and etch black CD cases. Maybe it isn't so underpowered after all!
Lastly, I began to look at the code I will be modifying. I am using Python code from
here. I need to change the code from controlling bare H-bridges (which take four inputs) to controlling the EasyDriver stepper boards (which take one step input and one direction input). It may be a challenge, but with the prize of a laser cutter at stake, I am sure I can do it!
