After 100+ hours of late night wrench turning, the big laser is finally ready for soft commissioning*! We now have the best of both worlds - the cutting power of a CO2 laser with the superfine detail engraving capabilities of a diode laser, all in one machine.
Come on by to get an intro to what our newest laser can do - as this is a dual source machine and engineered to meet CADR Class 1 operation... the workflow in Lightburn is slightly different.
* Why soft commissioning? The laser is operational, but not done. Specifically:
- The wiring is comically bad. We will need to re-wire everything from the ground up to clean up the electrical and fluidics circuits.
- 450nm shielding material is on order and in transit. For now, using the diode laser will require laser safety glasses.
- Some temporary parts still need to be replaced with UL94V0 printed parts.
- Some of the secondary safety interlocks - mmWave human presence detection, warning lights for Class 4 operation - etc are still missing.
But we also get that we've been limping along with our existing laser, and there are members who have things they would very much like to laser cut for Christmas. So, we are making the machine available in its current state and reworking to fix some of the issues after the holiday season is over.
Also check out other Workshops in Everett.
