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Summary
Dive into the world of laser engraving with Byte Sized Engineering as they tackle building a desktop laser engraver without any guidance. This video explores the challenges faced due to a lack of assembly instructions, offering a firsthand look at problem-solving and innovation with a budget-friendly device from Gearbest. Despite the hurdles, witness the journey from unboxing to successful engraving, culminating in the creation of a customized stencil. The video also provides an honest review of the laser engraver, praising its functionality but cautioning potential buyers about the lack of support and instructions.
Highlights
Byte Sized Engineering assembled a laser engraver without any instructions from Gearbest. 🚀
The video showcases creative problem-solving and the importance of having basic technical skills. 🧩
The product worked well for engraving despite the initial assembly challenges. 🌟
Key Takeaways
Starting a DIY laser engraver project can be an adventure, especially without instructions! 🛠️
Laser safety is crucial; always use protective eyewear when handling laser devices. 🕶️
Despite challenges, persistence and creativity can lead to successful outcomes and cool projects like custom stencils! 🌟
Lack of customer support can make assembly challenging; ensure you have all needed resources before starting similar projects. 📄
DIY projects not only fuel creativity but also skill-building and deeper understanding of technology! 💡
Overview
Ever thought about diving into the world of desktop laser engraving? Well, Byte Sized Engineering did just that, but with a twist — no instructions! That's right, what started as an exciting project turned into a test of patience and problem-solving as they were left to assemble the engraver without any guidance. Watch as they piece together the device with determination and wit, blending technical knowledge with good old-fashioned tinkering.
Safety first! The video highlights an often-overlooked aspect of laser projects: protective eyewear. It's essential, especially when handling laser diodes, to prioritize your safety. This engraver came with safety glasses included, emphasizing the importance of protecting your peepers when embarking on such electrifying endeavors.
Despite initial setbacks, the outcome was worth the effort. The engraver successfully cut through material, making way for customized projects like stencils. If you're into DIY tech and crafting, this video offers inspiration and a realistic look at what it takes to bring a laser engraver to life without a manual. Although there were praises for the product itself, the lack of support from Gearbest may be a dealbreaker for some.
Getting Started With A Desktop Laser Engraver Transcription
00:00 - 00:30 in this video I'm going to build a laser engraver a couple months ago gearbest.com reached out to me and wanted to support this channel and so I told them that I was interested in building a laser cutter which is different than a laser engraver but I looked on their website and they didn't have anything close to a laser cutter so I asked them to send me this pretty inexpensive laser engraver if you go on gearbest website it sells for just under three hundred dollars so they said this to me and when it arrived I opened it up
00:30 - 01:00 and I couldn't find any instructions or CD or SD card or anything that would tell me how to put this together I reached out to the contact that sent me this laser engraver and she said that it was a mistake it was supposed to be fully assembled and so I sent her a picture of it and she said okay I'll try to get something to you and she sent me a couple of links that didn't work so in this video I'm gonna be trying to assemble this laser engraver without any instructions and I'm gonna see if I can do it and if I get totally stuck I'll try to start googling and maybe somebody
01:00 - 01:30 else has figured out how to put together but I figured it'd be a little bit more fun to try to put this together without any instructions so I think the first thing I'll do is take everything out of the box and kind of identify what we have here I noticed it came with some laser safety glasses which is important when you're working with lasers you know you need to be wearing eye protection so it's good that they include that it looks like it comes with three NEMA 17 stepper motors I'm not sure what these are rated at I don't know what the holding torque is and then we've got a USB cable looks like this is the laser
01:30 - 02:00 diode itself I think it's a twenty 500 milliwatts laser diode okay it's got a little cooling fan on there looks like the power supply is on top that big ol inductor okay you can see here the model is fb0 for it's a 2500 milliliter and the wavelength is 445 nanometers I believe that's in the ultraviolet range next it looks like we have the controller board okay so I'm going to take the cover off here to get a closer look here as expected it's got an atmel microcontroller on there I think it's the Atmel 18 mega 328p
02:00 - 02:30 which is the same thing that the Arduino has it's also got the ch3 4-0 G so that's the usb-to-serial UART converter which allows you to plug in a USB cable into your computer and it'll show up as a comport and you can talk to this over you are my guess is that this is running some sort of firmware like herbal or something like that and I'm looking closer here at the motor drivers and I I'm guessing it's the Allegro stepper motor drivers we've got some cable wraps to help tidy up the wiring here we've got the looks like gt2
02:30 - 03:00 the two millimeter pitch timing belt and then also some pulleys that will go on the stepper motors I think these are probably the bearings that go on the extruded aluminum there are the gantry's to move in the x and y direction so here's a whole bunch of laser-cut black acrylic some structural pieces here here a whole bunch of bolts and screws and things here's the power supply the outputs 12 volts and 5 amps and here's some wiring that goes looks like they go to the motors that go between the stepper motor drivers and the stepper motors and lastly this is some black
03:00 - 03:30 anodized aluminum extrusion already tapped for me that's good so like I said there's no instructions there's no assembly guide no user manual or SD card or anything that came with this so it'll be some fun putting this thing together I think the first thing I'll do is peel all of the paper off of the acrylic pieces I hate this part it takes forever alright so next I'm probably gonna have
03:30 - 04:00 to look at a picture of this to kind of get an overall sense of how it goes together I want to get an idea of where these main aluminum extrusion pieces go I want to know which pieces of acrylic I need to put where and how this kind of all goes together so I'm probably gonna pull up the computer and just look at a picture real quick of the of the product listing on gearbest to see if I can put this together okay so here's the listing on gearbest like I said it's a two hundred and seventy-five bucks I don't see any instructions to put this thing together on this page okay look at this
04:00 - 04:30 disclaimer please read and follow the user manual carefully before you assemble or operate the 3d printer first of all it's not even a 3d printer and second they didn't give me any user manual I asked for using okay so here's some pictures of it okay so I'm looking at these aluminum extrusions here and it looks like there are free that are kind of big long ones and those form two sides of the y-axis and then the gantry for the x axis looks like these pieces here probably are the feet that go on all four corners
04:30 - 05:00 okay so I think this big one goes here on the sides on the y axis but now this is starting to make sense so there's three stepper motors and two of them go on the sides for the y axis and then the other one goes for the x axis there is no z axis motor which makes sense and now I'm thinking about the two stepper motor drivers that I saw on the board my guess is that the two Y axis motors will share the same driver so you actually only need two drivers so I'll go ahead and start laying this out on the table as I see it here okay so I've got it
05:00 - 05:30 laid out how I think it goes the next step is to take all of these nuts and bolts and stuff and to figure out where they go so I'm probably have to count out how many I need for the feet and figure out which ones go there how many I'm gonna need to secure each part and figure out which of these go where so that'll be my next task after organizing
05:30 - 06:00 all of the nuts and bolts I started assembling the stepper motor drivers on the y-axis after that I assembled the stepper motor on the x-axis after the stepper motor carriages were finished being assembled I slid them onto the aluminum extrusion then I
06:00 - 06:30 assembled the cross section piece finally I assembled the legs on all four corners all right I've got the frame mostly together it seems like the next step I'm gonna do is put the timing belts on to the stepper motors when I first looked into this I thought aw crap I'm gonna have to take this apart because it came with these little tea nuts that are supposed to slide into the
06:30 - 07:00 aluminum track here and I thought I would have to take them apart so I could slide them in but actually if you look closely here you can actually slide them in and twist it and it actually fits without having to take it apart so I'm really happy about that at this point I've got all the mechanical components complete I've got all of the belts on and I've got the controller in the back here secured to the frame so I think it's time to move on to the electronics and the first
07:00 - 07:30 thing I'm gonna do is attach the laser diode to the front here in order to assemble the laser diode I actually had to disassemble the x-axis stepper motor carriage after reassembling the x-axis stepper motor carriage I put some wire wrap around all of the cables and plug them into the controller board I've moved the laser engraver down into my lab I think I'm ready to do a test cut
07:30 - 08:00 or a test engrave on this thing I loaded my logo into Universal g-code sender my plan is to take this piece of MDF and put some blue painters tape on it and then the machine is going to cut through the tape and and kind of make an outline of my logo and that will allow me to peel off the excess and kind of leave like a mask of my logo we're gonna see how it works out what's my first attempt at cutting through the blue painters tape was sort of a failure I had the feed rate set to high which
08:00 - 08:30 means that the laser moved around too quickly and didn't get a chance to burn all the way through the blue tape the second time around I lowered the feed rate and had much better success I just
08:30 - 09:00 sat here in amazement as I watched this laser cut through the blue tape okay so it looks like it's done now I'm gonna try to start peeling off the outside of the tape and leave just the mask of the logo when it came time to peel off the blue tape I used an exacto knife at first but then realized that my tweezers were actually a better tool for the job
09:00 - 09:30 I was really happy with how this turned out essentially what I've made here is like a stencil I could spray paint this or whatever and then peel off so that's one of the cool uses for a laser engraver like this as you could cut out any design and make stencils as I said at the beginning of the video gearbest sent me this laser engraver to test out and give an honest review the pros for this laser engraver is that it works I
09:30 - 10:00 got it together and it cut out some things I didn't get a chance to test the power output or anything like that but it seems like it's works as it's supposed to it works as advertised so that's good the negative is it didn't come with any assembly instructions no pictures no software and I basically got no support from gearbest on this I reached out to them and emails and said hey I don't have a user manual can you send me something and they didn't really respond they sent me some links that didn't really even work with the lack of
10:00 - 10:30 support and the lack of documentation I can't recommend getting this one eventually I want to build a much higher power co2 laser cutter probably either a 40 watt or an 80 watt with that high power of a laser you're actually able to cut through wood and acrylic and that kind of stuff so that's eventually what I'd like to get to and this was kind of a stepping stone to get to that point that's it for this video I've posted a couple other videos right here that I think you might like I make a lot of other project videos like this on my channel if that's something you're into subscribing to bite-size will help
10:30 - 11:00 YouTube's algorithm find and recommend more videos like this for you to watch thanks for watching and I'll see you next time