K40 Laser Cutters - Worth the cost?

[Skinnylinny]

Hi everyone,

I've been doing laser cutting for a while now on the laser cutter at my local Hackspace (a rather nice HPC LS3060), and I'm doing enough that I'm considering buying my own cutter. As a general rule, I'm only cutting material up to 2mm (and occasionally 3mm) thick, mostly card and MDF. My budget is sadly limited, but I have had an offer of an interest-free loan of enough that I could afford a K40 cutter (with basic fume extraction, water cooling etc. However, I've no experience of these very cheap, generic, Chinese cutters. They're 40W CO2 lasers (I don't think a diode-based one is likely to be powerful enough for my needs?), and they don't seem to have a way to set the Z height (making focussing tricky). 

Does anyone here have experience with this cutter, or suggestions of similarly low-budget but actually-functional cutters? I'm mainly making parts for rolling stock at 4mm scale, so a positioning accuracy of about 0.1mm would be ideal. My major concern is the focussing. 

For examples of the sorts of things I currently produce, see:

LBSCR Open D
SECR Push-Pull Set
Brick Hut

Thanks in advance,

Linny

[nick_bastable]

it may be worth looking through this thread http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/108310-darkly-labs-emblaser-affordable-laser-cutter-review/

 

Nick

[Skinnylinny]

Hi Nick,

I've been reading the Emblaser thread but I'd very much like to avoid needing multiple passes to cut through 3mm MDF, and I really need a cutter with built-in extraction rather than an open-frame one. The Emblaser 2 would fulfil both of those requirements, but then there's the small matter of the price - about ten times my budget!

[jonhall]

I can't comment about the K40, but my makerspace has had a cheep Chinese 300x500 and now 500x700 machines, and these seem pretty well screwed together for the money -  but they are lacking in some safety features and the CE mark must stand for Chinese Engineering - I suspect some of the more expensive cutters in the UK that do comply with the rules are the same machine but rebuilt with proper locks and interlocks.

 

Jon