I took it out and replaced it with a pin bed. The stock bed has some sort of spring-loaded clamp which nobody uses. Not that I mind the smell of burnt wood, but when cutting plexi I don’t want to have the fumes in my home. I discovered that I need to switch on its exhaust hood too, or else the smoke just descends down the tube into my kitchen I merged the exhaust with the one coming from my cooking stove. I also have a 20x more powerful vent lying around which I may eventually use. I love it when I can make the upgrades to a machine on the machine itself! It is a 10 cm bathroom vent about as powerful as the stock one, but it has a tight seal and prettier at least. Next wast was replacing the supplied ventilator by my own. It was scary to do but in the end i don’t think i compromised the integrity of the frame. It needs a hole in the case as well as in the alu X-rail profile. Second more courageous bit was cutting a hole that allows larger stock to be cut. I took the whole inside of the machine out, so with the angle grinder I had no issues to speak of. Depending on which tools you have, and what other mods you intend to do this can be an easy or cumbersome task. So trimming it is an obvious way to enlarge the available work area. Trimming the air exhaustįor some reason the air exhaust takes a lot of space inside the machine. So first thing to do was to upgrade the shit out of it. When my machine arrived, none of the known potential problems were an issue. So I have no opinion about the usability of the software for drawing. I draw up all my designs in Illustrator, and I only use Coreldraw for importing and sending the artwork to the laser cutter, which works fine. Recent models come with a USB interface and Coreldraw with a lasercutting plugin. There’s also a USB-dongle, which does not contain actual software but is some kind of USB licence key (much like the iLok for example). Apparently they just went to their local supermarket, stuffed their shopping cart full of writable DVDs, burned the software onto them and sent them out with the machines, haha… But hey I’m not complaining. The bundled software and drivers are burned onto a consumer-grade DVD. They do ship with it what looks to be a tube of silicone sealant (I can’t say for sure since it has a Chinese label) which makes it even more laughable. It is too big, doesn’t really fit the machine and doesn’t seal at all. The water pump is usable, although I’ve read multiple stories of the adapter piece not fitting the cooling tubes. Also, the accessories that come as part of the package are hilarious! Or sad, depending on how you look at it :-). That said, it is still imperative to check all electrical connections, look for and replace missing screws, check the state of the laser tube (make sure there are no cracks in the glass), re-align the mirrors, etc. The biggest point of critique remains the limited work area of roughly 20 x 30 cm. Recent revisions of the machine have improved in quality though. “Then it must be rubbish” I hear you say, but surprisingly with some minor modifications and upgrades it can become a really useful machine. For the uninitiated, this is a Chinese low-budget (and I mean really really low-budget) lasercutter that actually is cheaper to buy and ship to Europe, than it would be to source the individual parts and build it yourself. Next to my Shapeoko 2, I am also the proud owner of a K40 laser cutter. Want to do the same thing to yours? Check the LAYZOR website. Update: I have taken my K40 apart and converted it to a whole new & improved machine: the LAYZOR! Read all about this project here.
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