Official Luthiers Forum!

Curious as to who here is using a laser, and for what. A little background: I have a converted sieg x2 mill running linuxcnc. This is a fun machine for making bridges and other relatively small work. I was planing on building a large hiwin/servo gantry table cnc and still plan to. That was all back burnered when I ran into a friend I had lost touch with. He was now running a laser engraving business. He showed me his epilog m2 fusion. I was absolutely blown away by the machine, and frankly a bit embarrassed that I was a complete neophyte when it comes to lasers.

That was about two and a half months ago. An Epilog machine was far out of my limited budget, so I started looking at other options. That led me to the imported machines. After a few weeks of back and forth emails, I pulled the trigger on a Chinese Redsail m900 with 100w reci w2 tube. I took delivery of the machine last Thursday.

So far I've had a lot of fun with it. No issues so far. The thing is absolutely massive, its work area is 2 x 3' but its chassis takes up some serious shop real estate. It cut is limited to 1/2" but depending on the material its still fast by my standards. I've been thinking about the possible aid it could be to the building process. It should streamline template/mould/jig making tremendously. I was also thinking it would work for cutting tops and backs, fret slots, and inlay/rosette work. Curious as to what other are using their laser cutters for.

We have an 80w Chinese laser. Took much tweaking to get it to work right in the beginning. Also many workarounds to get the controller and software to do what we want. But it has cut thousands of parts for us and we've figured out what it's good at and what it's not.

For us, it's great at wood inlays, headstock plates, drop top caps, plastic and wood inlays, control cavity covers and simple pickguards.

I've got an Epilog 12X18 Helix. 40 watt. Along with a 2' x 4' gantry CNC. They work great together.

Besides the obvious uses of acrylic templates etc. on the laser, I found that cutting inlay on it, and the pockets on the CNC go hand in hand.

_________________
Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
Facebook
Cairns, Australia

I contract out, but all my faceplates and logos are lasered.

I've had a 45W Epilog 36EXT for about 10 years, and several smaller Epilog's before that.
I use it for all kinds of artistic stuff like marquetry, inlay, templates, tools, guides, etc.
I've also made templates and cut headstock inlays for several well known luthiers.
I love the machine and would have a hard time giving it up now, I'm sure.
If I could change anything, I'd buy the 60W model (even 120W maybe).
If I ever do sell it and get another, I'll probably go for one of the new Epilog Fusion models.

Cheers,
Dave

_________________
Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"