What is up guys, In this tutorial I am gonna show you how to conver any 3d printer
into a powerful 2.5 w laser engraver capable of cutting wood and engraving into almost every material.
So, We are gonna start this project by firstly choosing the right laser module for our needs.
Starting with 500mw laser you will be only able to engrave some shapes into wood, plastic or leather
and you can get that one really cheap for 35 €.
Furthermore, With higher power output lasers you are able to engrave deeper, quicker and also cut some plywood
and that is the reason why I chose a 2.5W laser which is just strong enough to cut 4mm plywood with multiple passes.
And when handling with laser dont forget to put on some safety glasses.
SO, I firtsly detach a fan and extruder and remove the main holder,
so I can drill 2 holes for the screws that are gonna secure a laser to the printer.
All the links of the lasers will be in the description below.
Secondly, we are gonna need 12v to 5v voltage regulator which is necesarray to control the  power output of the laser.
3d printer fan port provides 12v at full power but  Laser ttl modul only accepts a voltage up to 5v
so that is why we need a voltage step down regulator.
So, after soldering that together, I connect laserd diode, fan, ttl port
and main power input to the smal motherboard that you receive with the laser.
For the main power source I am gonna use this regulated dc power supply
but you can use any 12V power adaptor capable of providin at least 2 amps.
Now lets secure the laser to the main holder with 2 screws.
For best performance I would suggest you also drill some addtional holes for the airflow
but I didn't feel almost any heat generated by the laser so I guess that is not that important.
After that, I connect a 5v regulator to the 12v fan port which is gonna send the command how strong the laser should be during engraving process.
Last thing is to connect the motherboard with the main 12v power input and that it.
Now we can start calibrating the laser by firstly finding the right focus point.
Autohome all axes and try to turn on the fan somewhere from 1-255.
As you can see the laser is turned off at 0 and outputing the maximum power at 255.
Now I would suggest you place a piece of paper on the bed and reduce the power to a minimum
minimum so we can better see if our point is in focus or not.
You can simply adjust that with a small knob on the laser itself.
After you manage to do that, lets hop to the computer and download the needed software for engraving.
Firstly, download  an inkscape software and two plugins for laser engraving.
Again, I will put all those links in the description box below.
After installing the inkscape, extract both plugins and copy the content to the written location.
Now, simply open the inkscape and firstly define the workspace of your printer.
After that import your favorite logo and vectorise it by clicking trace bitmat command.
Also, dont forget to resize the image to the final dimensions and place it in the left bottom corner.
So now, the first plugin we are gonna use is the one that are going to fully engrave the whole image on our material.
Choose the right output folder and Set the speed around 1000 and click apply.
The g-code will be generated in the txt file so open it and replace txt ending with .gcode and that is it.
As you can see that method is pretty slow but it can engrave some really nice logos
and also greyscale images but I will cover that up in the next video.
So the second methond is almost the same, you need to set the right engraving speed
and how many passes you want which is very practical if you want to cut some plywood.
I managed to cut balsa wood with only few passes but that is not the most amaizing part.
2.5 w laser is also capable of cutting some 4mm plywood but it takes a bit more time
and much more passes but all in all it is very practical equipment for all tech and diy enthusiasts.
And yea if you are into electronics you would also be able to create your own circuits and many other things
If you have any questions about the build, I would love to answer them and help you with problems that occored during the build process.
Thank you again for watching, lots of cool projects and tutorials are comming up so,
hit that subscribe button and I will see you next week, peace.
