Adding 15 watt laser

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DUTCH
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2018 9:33 pm

Adding 15 watt laser

Post by DUTCH »

Thinking about buying a 15 watt laser for some reasonably detailed wood details [shallow] I was told essentially that the laser which came with the machine really has limited capabilities. Does anyone have experience with one of these 15 watt 450nm lasers advertised on EBAY?

scubanimal
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Mar 06, 2013 2:05 pm

Re: Adding 15 watt laser

Post by scubanimal »

Dutch,
I don't, but just purchased, installed and am now using the 7w laser. so far I'm fairly pleased, the 7w is more poweful than I expected. As right now I'm really just running tests to see what it is capable of if you can describe sufficiently what you are looking for I'll give it shot.
Also something to consider and one of the reasons I ended up with the NWA, vice one of the J-Tech or other lasers. Controlling it. J-Tech was really upfront with me about the pros and cons of their unit on a Shark. while the price was nice, there were going to be some drawbacks. The key amoung them was that every job was going to take a fair bit of g-code manipulation if I wanted to do anything really sophisticated as the only control I would have is on/off. Where as with the NWA I can control the power. Note the power usage directly relates to lifespan. So I've set up a few tools in my Vectric toolbase for power settings and can quickly just set one, edit it if need be. One of the really cool things is I can combine all of my 'laser' tools into a single .tap file even though the power and feedrates are different. Just something to consider.
On the forum.vectric.com I was swayed by a guy who just has a 2.5w laser doing what I had been told by a vendor would take at least 60 watts to do, he just uses more passes, to do it. That is really easy to do in the quick engrave toolpath.
The NWA is not perfect by a long way, there is a lot of room for improvement. But for me, looking at all the alternatives and the amount of effort it would take, doing a couple of passes to get what I need done, vice the hassle of modify g-code every time, plus just getting another laser mounted and working seemed a good trade off. .... for now anyway.

Let me know what you're trying to do, I'm curious what this 7w is capable of.

DUTCH
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2018 9:33 pm

Re: Adding 15 watt laser

Post by DUTCH »

Thanks for the comments. I need to go back and read the research on the 15 watt piece and see if there is some interface possible. I am talking most about some simple engraving but onwards to some pretty complicated artwork. I do mainly beer tap handles but the sky is the limit. For $100 I may just get the 15 watt laser and experiment. I did see somewhere that there was an adjustable power output option with the shark but it required a small bit of wiring in the Shark unit.
Not sure what the NWA is or what it stands for. Please keep in touch - I really appreciate your help.
DUTCH

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