cheap laser cutters?

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Specifically, I'm looking at this model here, which is offered by countless vendors on ebay and amazon with slightly different prices and warranty length. Anybody got it, and could tell me if it's okay for the price or utter crap? I'm reading mixed reviews about it... seems that usually you got to finetune/adjust the mirrors yourself after delivery, and the driver software seems to be terrible, but that's something I could endure, and right now there's no way I could afford "decent" models which generally start at more than a thousand bucks.

b-bump

Oh come on. I can't be the only poorfag who would like to have a cheap laser cutter for this hobby. And there must be someone out there who ordered one of the cheap models from alibaba, right?

Unfortunately you're going to be stuck with pre-made cheap Chinese shit or a pretty unsafe DIY version for the price you want to pay. Them's the breaks. Laser cutters are expensive.

If you only need to use one sometimes then maybe joining a hackerspace near you might be a good option. They typically are well kitted out and will have people there to help you operate the machines.

>>547870
Sadly we don't have a "hackerspace" in the city I live in, already checked. Some local companies offer cutting and engraving, but they either want you to place huge orders or pay ridiculous amounts for smaller custom jobs - makes sense considering industry cutters easily cost as much or more than a car, but still quite disappointing. Actually made me consider to save up money for an industry tier cutter myself, it might turn out to be an interesting business opportunity.

>>547391
hi op, I used to work for universal lasers. I would say yea the cheap ones your looking at will def cut through paper and very thin wood. The main issue is keeping the mirrors calibrated. bed clean etc. more shallow bed will be more fire prone. Anyways as long as your not cutting tiny gears to make a functional model of an engine the cheap ones are fine

>>547895
That's great to heart, thanks. Right now I'm not too interested in functional models of anything, I want the cutter mostly for "artsy" stuff like decorative trinkets, lampshades, pendants and such. But I wonder why you'd mention tiny gears, do the cheap models lack precision? Or is it "only" a matter of resolution when it comes to tiny shapes? Well, as long as it can actually cut holes into paper, wood and maybe plastic it'll do.

Earlier this month I've bought a vinyl Silhouette cutplotter, but the material it can process is too limited for me, doesn't do well with thicker cardstock, and plastic and wood is completely impossible which is a shame, it's really only suitable for thin foils and medium cardstock. So I'd like to upgrade to a laser as soon as possible, and won't be able to afford one of the more expensive models anytime soon.

>>547895
Another question, is there some guideline how strong the laser needs to be at least to be able to cut say thin wood? I assume 40W like the model I posted is enough for cutting, while the weaker ones with 2-5W or less are only suitable for engraving, right?

>>547899
Curious what weight of card stock you're woking with. I can usually get clean cuts with med weight chip board (regular chip board, not the super flimsy stuff Silhouette sells) and cereal box card board so I would think it would work well with heavy card stock, but I've only tried it with up to 140lb paper since that's all I have on hand.

Wood is a lost cause though, you can only do veneer and laminate sheets, or balsa sheets but those are expensive as fuck around here. Depending on what you're using the plastic for, you can do thin sheets of styrene and similar. Up to about .02 inches you can get cuts, and it can do a little thicker for scoring and snapping. I also managed to cut some .5 mm sintra sheets, but it took many passes and some finagling, I think next time I'll just do a normal double cut to use as a guide then cut it with an exacto.

>>547905
Well I gotta admit that I didn't test heavy cardstock and plastic/chipboard myself. I'm basing my prejudices on a longish review from another guy, but he went through all sorts of materials and used different weights/thickness for each sort so I'm pretty confident the results are legit. I don't want to dull my blade before I got a replacement handy. Seems that even with multiple passes there's no way to cut chipboard with the Silhouette Portrait, only score+snap, same for plastic and even photopaper cardstock and so on.

>>546748

i've looked into this model too, seems that it's a nightmare to get the mirrors aligned.

Would like to know if anyone has first-hand experience of this.

>>547915
Do you have a link? I'm curious what the weight and thickness of the materials are shooting for because lemons are common with Silhouette machines (seems common with lots of cutters marketed towards scrapbookers in that price range) so if a machine is having trouble with certain materials you may want to contact the manufacturer or return it. Silhouette machines do have many limitations (I can go on with things I really hate about them and the company), but I think for the cost they handle a decent amount of material. Very thin plastics are possible, which may be useless to you if you need them to be quite thick, but it's inaccurate to say that it cannot so any plastics at all. Again with chip board, what weight and thickness? I don't think it can do really heavy stuff, just some lightweight to med weight stuff. I don't know what brand of photo cardstock was tested, but I have some plastic photo film for light boxes that is labeled as 7 mil (about 0.1778 mm) that gets clean cuts with two passes. I also managed to cut some copper clad flex pcb material as a test, I wouldn't recommend it but it did cut all the way around after multiple passes.

This forum thread was what convinced me to buy one, lots of people cutting heavy cardstock and thin plastics. Most of the Silhouette owners in this thread have the cameo, but the blade pressure and everything should be the same for the portrait: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/79025-a-guide-to-using-the-silhouette-cameo-cutter/

I'm planing on getting an Epilog Zing soon, once I move after the new year and can actually have ventilation set up for it, but I still see myself using my Silhouette a fair bit.

>>547976
Interesting that you would mention lemons, my Portrait machine already has trouble with cutting certain 160gsm cardstock - and with a fresh blade, I've used that thing only a few times since I got it. Which is disappointing and weird because the specifications say 300gsm should work. Maybe it's just the blade, I'll order a new one, and if that doesn't improve things I'll try to contact the seller about it.

>>547976
>>548004
About the review link, I didn't ignore your question but sadly I didn't set a bookmark... gonna try to find it...

>>546748
I believe I have read from someone on /csg/ having bought one. It's pretty shitty and has lots of bugs. Also the software they give you with it has a botnet. You can modify it yourself and get it to wqork with other stuff like LinuxCNC, but it's a lot of tinkering.
I don't think it is a good choice for delicate papercraft.

Also this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwUgo4lqx4

>>548097
I was listening to you until you sperged out about the (((botnet))).

>>548101
It's what he said, I can neither confirm nor deny his claims as I haven't tested it.

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>>546743

>>>/tg/

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I bought one of the cheap gantry ones with a 2.5watt diode laser recently. It engraves wood/paper/card well, and with 20+ passes will get through 3mm plywood.

Cutting paper and card is easy.

The accuracy is decent for smallish parts, but not super amazing. Do need to be careful of unexpected ignition. (Pic related)

I just export the gcode out from Inkscape with a plugin.

If you were going to do a lot of cutting, maybe go for the CO2 tube laser, in my opinion.