I took a few hours yesterday to give the unit a quick wipe-down to clean off any loose dirt, and take a few pictures now that my hand is feeling a bit better. Over the next few days I’ll be posting a review of the state of the various components. But first, I’ve had a couple of questions about the laser/power, so I thought I’d make a quick post about it.
As I prepare to have the chassis stripped of its current paint & rust coating, I’ve been thinking about how I should refinish it. The chassis itself is built like a tank out of heavy gauge welded steel. It needs some sort of protective coating, or it will just rust into nothing. My initial intention was to have it powder-coated, but now I’m having second thoughts.
(more…)Today this project nearly came to an end as quickly as it started.
(more…)Now that this project is officially a go, I need to source some replacement parts. So as a starting point I thought I’ll see what official replacement parts from ULS will cost, before I try to hack something together. So I put together a quick list based on my first impressions during the tear-down.
(more…)Had a little time after work today so I thought I’d try and test fire the laser as it working is pretty much the deciding factor on the fate of this project. After a bit of googling, I found a manual for a ULS OEM laser that contained the connector pin-out. I cut the wiring harness apart, separating out the links to the laser. I still want to use the original power supply if I can. So first thing I did was fire up the power supply, and was happy to see it was outputting at the desired 48V. Next I set up the laser aimed at a concrete block wall, with a piece of card stock as a target. Following the pin-out in the manual I found, I wired in the interlock safety loop with a key-switch, and then used a two way momentary switch attached to an external power supply to trigger the aiming visible red laser, and the CO2 burning laser. I re-applied power, and the laser fan spun-up making a terrible noise… sounds like a blade is hitting the guard, or a bearing is shot… either way, that will need to be replaced. Next I tested the visible laser, and was happy to find it working. [this was a bonus, I was not expecting an integrated visible pointing laser] Then I armed the laser by flipping the key to the safe position and tried firing the CO2 laser…. nothing. My heart sank, I thought perhaps this find was too good to be true.
(more…)Things have been busy at work as we just moved, so I haven’t had much time to think about the laser. I’ve decided to take the next few Fridays off from work to work on it, as I have some accrued vacation time I need to use up before the year-end. This is the first Friday, and I decided to start breaking down the laser to asses the state of things. I’ll post more detail over the next little while as I examine the bits more closely, but for now enjoy the photos that I took to try and detail the construction, and the damage to the unit.
So I headed over to Brandon’s workplace to get the laser today. I didn’t bring my camera, so I don’t have any new pictures, but will try to document as much as possible when I get into tearing the thing apart. The earlier pictures don’t do the disaster justice, it really is a rusted, burnt out hunk of junk. But the laser does look salvageable, so at least I might get something out of it (if it works).
(more…)
Ouch my eye! 