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@kuntheec Sorry to hear you've had problems, but this thread is about the CNC6040 It's long enough without irrelevant posts about lasers.

Ah - I can see your just spamming everywhere with the same...

Very useful info on this thread, guys. Thanks. I just got myself a second hand 6040Z-S65J which seems to work OK during initial jogging around using the blue box. A G540 is ready to go in when I get...

That's the first bit you need to their away on those lasers. I heard so many bad things that mine was never even used before it was replaced.

Turn the grey dial to the left to reduce the current. I like to run mine between 10 and 15mA and have marked where these are.

The Y limit switch is an optical switch rather than a mechanical microswitch. The wiring is shared with the Y axis stepper motor in a ribbon cable. Why is it different to the X axis? Nobody knows.

There are obviously some disadvantages with this setup. What do you think are the advantages? There's certainly nothing wrong with trying something different, but there should be a reason why you...

OK. Thanks for the info. I'll tell my 40w laser to stop doing it then

You guys are so stuck up! A $600 laser is not as good as the $4000 ones you're trying to sell, but it's adequate of you're...

Some very unhelpful replies here! The cheap eBay lasers will happily cut 5mm softwood (balsa, ply) and acrylic. (Nothing you could afford will make a mark on metal.)

They are cheaply made and the...

The MF70 is a nice little machine. I converted one myself. One thing you might want to do next is extend the rather limited Y axis. Some info over on my blog if you're interested.
0xFRED

I'm not...

I found the opposite - cast milled very well, but extruded melted too easily. I saved the extruded for laser cutting instead but it also smells far worse than cast.

@thunderlaser You can't just swap the switches on a DC-K40. The Y limit switch is optical and the X limit switch is mechanical. At least that's how mine is set up.

Both acrylic (the window) and polycarbonate (basic safety glasses) are opaque to the IR from a co2 laser and will protect your eyes. I still bought some laser specific glasses though, just because...

Took a closer look at your photo. There is a metal tab that goes into the slot in the black optical switch, isn't there? I can't see one in the photo but it might be obscured. Blocking the light...

I'm not sure where to get a spare. If I get a chance I'll take a look inside mine to see if I can identify it. There's a reasonable chance it's a loose connection somewhere though. If you bought it...

The Y axis limit is an optical switch. Check that the metal tab on the carriage goes between the two halves of the switch. You should also be able to check by sliding a bit of cardboard in there to...

I do 1mm depth cuts with a 1mm two flute end mill happily at 100mm/min. I have done 200 but that felt like pushing it. Spindle speed was about 8000rpm. Did the bit break when cutting sideways or as...

Yes. I do that sort of thing all the time on my little Proxxon MF70 mill. Make sure you use cast acrylic rather than extruded, as extruded tends to melt.

£500 will just about get you a low end 40W laser on eBay. It should be up to the job, but they're renowned for being of dubious quality and needing a bit of tinkering to get them working. I've got...

The Proxxon is a great little machine and not to hard to convert - I've CNC'd one myself. However, the work area is very small. It's about 130mm x 48mm, although it is possible to increase it to 130...

The laser is just two stepper motors, two home switches (one optical, one mechanical) and a TTL input (active low) to fire the laser. It's fairly easy to convert to Mach3. The plus is that you can...

Dean's right. It's not ideal. The horizontal hatching (or something like that - I've not for CamBam in front of me) also isn't perfect but might be better.

I'm not sure there's a forum for exactly that, but I use this setup. You could try creating a polyline outline of the letters and persuading CamBam to do a pocket operation with the tool diameter set...

I can thoroughly recommend the replacement board from www.chriscircuits.com if you want to swap out the standard board. I've got some experience of the TB6560 as that's what's controlling my CNC...

I went for the one linked above and it worked perfectly. Seems like much better quality compared to the original. I don't think it takes the full 20kV as it's on the return side. Anyway, it works.
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That looks very similar to what happened to mine. I hadn't noticed a drop in power but was cutting on low power anyway. I had seen arcing to the case.

This is what I used. It looks very different but works fine. I didn't connect the case to anything, just used the existing bracket to hold it in place.
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It's a 50W wire wound resistor - 50k if I remember correctly. I successfully replaced mine. I'll dig out the details of my replacement when I get a chance.

What's the version number on your board? It will probably be 4.0 or 4.1. They're wired a little differently. I'll see if I can get round to checking mine.

I can thoroughly recommend the...

I decided to play around with a laser and went for one of the eBay DC-K40 lasers. It works out about £500 including delivery. The core of the machine is sound but you will probably need to reattach...

My Chinese eBay laser (DC-K40IV) is working well - after the usual "maintenance" like putting the bits that had fallen off back on again. However I noticed yesterday that the ballast resistor has a...