hello all,
just wanted to post my initial impression of the emblaser laser cutter.
one of my pet peeves has always been my inability to keep cuts 'squared up' when cutting with a knife. i always felt that the time i spent sanding to get edges just right, a waste. i surfed the internet for solutions and for a time seriously considered getting a mechanical die cutting machine. ultimately i decided against those because i figured out that these machines are not capable of cutting really small parts. the blade is limited by the dimensions of its own cutting surface. i then looked at laser cutters and soon realized that the price of these units to be several thousand dollars. there are chinese cutters on ebay that are cheaper but their performance, build quality, documentation and support seemed questionable at best. plus most of them tend to be co2 based which require serious ventilation and cooling. finally while visiting a geman modeling site i read about the diode based emblaser. i visited emblaser website and finally found the machine i was looking for! just to be sure i contacted a couple of users and asked for their opinion. one of them is paper shipwright's david hathaway. he kindly replied with a glowing recommendation and i was sold when i learned that he had cut 1/200 scale ships railings with ease!
the emblaser began as a kickstater project by darkly labs based in australia and run by domenic di giorgio. the machine comes in the form of a kit and the a4 version costs $701.00 including the cutting software and shipping to usa. from the day i ordered it took just shy of 4 weeks for the machine to arrive. after downloading the excellent building instructions it took me about 6 hours to assemble it all. everything is provided, even the allen wrenches. the only other tools i needed were a screwdriver and pliers. the user manual, the cut2d software by vectric and the universal g code sender are also easy to use and require no more skill than using any average computer software.
i have had this machine for about a month now and i am thrilled with it. i think it will significantly change how i make models and their quality. mind you i have just made some simple parts so far but i think my knives, scissors and files are going to get rusty!
the 1/48 scale shovel head is plain copy paper.
the 4 tiny parts are 2mm wide
finally, the learning curve is not steep at all but does require patience to assemble the machine correctly and experiment with the settings. the one thing that can be frustrating is focusing the laser to be the sharpest possible, especially for someone like me with less than perfect vision. one of the things that sold me about this machine is the support. domenic promptly answered a couple of questions i had. the darkly labs forum is great and i suppose this having started as a kickstarter project the community is a bunch of like minded diy'ers who are very keen on helping each other, just like here!
check out their website
https://darklylabs.com/ and see if this is something you may want.