Liberty4Ever's Laser Build Log

[pjeran]

First, a big thanks for the documentation, it gave me the kick that I needed to start the project. I am a couple of steps behind you right now, just got the XY stage and am working out the enclosure and Z lift. Once things start coming together, I will start a separate buildlog.

For the cutting table, have you looked at McMaster Carr - a dangerous place to be sure.

They have 0.5" thick aluminum egg crate material for the lowest price that I have seen. It would be nice to have a steel material to use magnets for hold down, but that really starts looking spendy.

Here is what I was thinking for the table.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#aluminum-honeycomb/=k6l0yi

I look forward to seeing your Reci turned on, that is the one that I am looking at!

Paul

[educa]

Want to see a 80 Watt RECI shoot? This is my 80watt reci shooting in PPI mode at 4mm plywood.

I deliberately set it at only 400mm/s speed and 16 pulses per millimeter (around 400PPI) because it gives me an absolutely perfect cut with no burnt marks on top and button of my plate.

Sure it can go a lot faster, but then you have to accept the burned marks on the top surface.




(by the way set youtube to fullscreen and HD, it looks sooooo good )

[Liberty4Ever]

Here is what I was thinking for the table.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#aluminum-honeycomb/=k6l0yi

I had the McMaster-Carr honeycomb in my online shopping cart, along with some other potential table bed materials. I probably went with the perforated stainless for longevity. At 80W, I figured the spot beam would have enough power density to erode the aluminum over time. I bought a new honeycomb for a friend's 40W laser that I had been using, even though I didn't wear it out. My jobs were all cut on my own sheet metal or fixtures, but I wanted to maintain the laser as a way of offsetting my laser use. My friend's business mostly uses it to laser engrave and cut out industrial device labels, and they put the material directly on the honey comb table. If I decide I need honeycomb for occasional jobs in the future, I'll probably get a 2' X 2' chunk of the aluminum honeycomb from McMaster-Carr. I place 1-2 orders with them a week.

The McMaster-Carr honeycomb would probably be a better choice for most people, instead of the heavy perforated stainless steel that I chose. It's also about $20 cheaper, which is nice. No more than I'll use my laser, and given that I generally don't lase directly on the table, the aluminum honeycomb would probably last me forever, and it's fairly cheap and easy to replace if needed.



Thanks for the 80W laser cutting video educa! It was very motivational!

[Liberty4Ever]

Perforated Stainless Steel Laser Bed Update

The perforated stainless steel that I ordered on eBay for the 24" X 48" laser table arrived about a week ago. It's .11" thick and quite heavy, but it has about a 2" cup across the 48" dimension. I think it'll flatten out OK. When I cut away the corrugated cardboard, I was disappointed and a little upset to see a 2" strip of solid stainless along the 48" dimension, but I measured it and that was extra material, probably where the sheet was clamped while it was perforated. I'm not crazy about being the person to remove this 48" long piece of heavy stainless, but it's a nice chunk of free stainless. I'm building an 8' X 12' shed in my back yard to house a lot of junk from my basement shop so I have space to work and build a laser in there, and I think I'll use a router to mortise a section out of the 4X4 that I'm using as a header for the door frame and I'll install the heavy stainless flat in there as an anti-kick plate for added security.



Extruded Aluminum Framework Alternative?

One of my other slowly moving simultaneous projects is the CNCification of by little G1006 milling machine. I've converted to the Tormach Tooling System as part of the CNC conversion, and I purchased 40 of the ER20 collet holders as my standard tool holders. I found some mostly TTS compatible ER20 collet holders on eBay for about $15 each delivered, and they're very good quality imports. I'm building a 50 place tool tray to store the TTS tool holders. The tray itself is about $60 worth of 12"X24" plastic from McMaster-Carr. Then I started adding 1.5" X 1.5" extruded aluminum and the associated brackets and fasteners for the frame to hang it from the ceiling joists, and that added another $190 to the cost, with probably $10 or $15 more for the shipping. I decided to try Misumi. I struggled through their awful online ordering, and basically gave up on that. I found their online PDF catalog and found the portion that had the 40mm X 40mm extruded aluminum and managed to put together an order. I considered it an investment of my time, to learn the Misumi way of ordering so I could hopefully save some money on my machine building materials. The equivalent stuff, with a lot of extra nuts for the slots was $156, but with tax and shipping, it was going to be $172, without the fancy adjustable tool tray angle I'd have had with the McMaster-Carr parts. It was cheaper, but still not cheap. I'd rate the tradeoffs as follows. Misumi is cheaper and they have a lot more options. McMaster-Carr has simpler options so designing is easier, next day delivery at UPS ground prices for most people, and their order process is very simple... as opposed to Misumi's goofy quote, then order, then wait a week for them to ship and another week to get it order fulfillment process.

I returned to McMaster-Carr to look for cheaper alternatives and I found some 1.25" square fiberglass tubing with 1/8" wall thickness. No doubt that would be stiff as hell, lightweight, and very corrosion resistant. There were two problems. 1) There is no clever assortment of brackets and fasteners to enable anything I can imagine like the aluminum extrusions have. 2) The square fiberglass tubing is green. I figure I can buy or make aluminum brackets for my fairly simple needs, and I can paint it if the green is too horrid. I wonder if I can powder coat the fiberglass? Apparently I can! http://www.ehow.com/how_4910274_make-powder-coating-adhere-fiberglass.html Thank you Algore for the awesome internet!

I decided to spend the $30 on the fiberglass tubing for the hanging tool tray. It'll give me a chance to experiment with it and see how I like it, with an eye toward using it to build the frame for my laser. There is the potential for a lot of cost savings there, as the laser frame is quite large and fairly complex. I might be able to buy the flat plate brackets that are intended for corner braces on extruded aluminum frames and use those on the fiberglass. I was struggling with how best to attach the skin panels on my laser when using extruded aluminum for the frame. I think I can just have the panels laser cut with mounting holes and use the panels as a drill template for the fiberglass tubing and screw on the panels so they're easy to remove for maintenance. In theory, the skins could even be used in place of the brackets to hold the frame together if they were thick enough not to buckle, but I'll probably use simple L brackets in all of the corners to screw the frame together, and screw the non-structural skins on the outside.

At first, it seems that the lack of clever accessories is a detriment compared to the accessory rich aluminum extrusion systems, but I won't have any hassle from forgetting to insert a nut before assembling an aluminum framework. For all of the high tech cool factor cleverness, I've found the aluminum extrusions to be a pain. The square fiberglass tubing is conceptually much simpler. It's almost like wood working. I can cut it with the carbide blade on my power miter saw, just as I would with the aluminum extrusions. I expect the fiberglass frame to be MUCH simpler to design, and probably a little bit easier to build as well. It's also a lot cheaper. I like simpler, easier and cheaper!

But first, I'll build the hanging tool tray for the milling machine and I'll see how I like it. Stay tuned.

[macona]

Be careful with the TTS system. I had it for my mill and I was having a lot of issue with the tool holders pulling out of the spindle. Lost a few work pieces to it.

It does not like a heavy side load. This isnt too surprising, really, since it is based of R-8 which has the same issue.

[Liberty4Ever]

Be careful with the TTS system. I had it for my mill and I was having a lot of issue with the tool holders pulling out of the spindle. Lost a few work pieces to it.

I recall you mentioning tool pull out in another thread, and when you later revealed your feeds and speeds, they looked insane compared to anything I'd attempt with my little milling machine. At least, I think that was you. My old brain can't keep all of these details straight.

I think TTS is probably good for 3 HP spindles or less. Even then, Tormach has had reports of tool pull out. I think I read where they published two torque specs for the drawbar. One was for typical machining and the other was for aggressive machining (relative to these smaller milling machines). The former offered fast and easy tool drop out when tool changing, and the latter required more attention to detail with greater maintenance requirements and running closer to maximum torque specs. The TTS application note also contains instructions on proper cleaning to remove oil from the parts that grip and transfer power from the spindle to the TTS tool holder via the modified R8 collet.

TTS isn't for everyone. IMO, people machining that aggressively should have something like CAT40 tool holders and spindle motors appropriate to the task.

I better like TTS. I had already spent $157 on ten ER20 tool holders and I just dropped another $452 on thirty more of them, and I'm about to spend a bit over $100 on materials to build the hanging tool rack that's TTS specific.

BTW - Speaking of TTS, if you have a 3 HP machine or less, check out Tormach's SuperFly fly cutter. It uses a single four sided carbide insert and it's optimized for machines with 3 HP or less on the spindle. On these smaller machines with their smaller spindle motors, the material removal rates exceed that of large shell cutters which need more power to work at their best. And you can use the SuperFly to remove material quickly when facing and then make a finishing pass with the same tool to produce a gorgeous surface finish. It's a shell mill and fly cutter in one neat little package. It's a great example of the advantages of providing tools or techniques that are appropriate to home/hobby/small machines, instead of trying to always copy what works for bigger machines in larger commercial production shops. I think air cooling or mist cooling may be another example, rather than trying to deal with the mess of flood cooling for most home shop applications. For occasional machining, I think it's probably better to slow down on the cutting and save the time it takes to clean up after flood cooling. YMMV. Disclaimer: I am not a machinist.

[Liberty4Ever]

More On Square Fiberglass Tubing Frame

I received the fiberglass square tubing from McMaster-Carr (MC# 8548K42) yesterday. It's very nice. I expected it to be light, strong and stiff, and it exceeded my expectations in every category. I think it'll be way stronger than a laser frame made from 40 mm extruded aluminum. Even the green color isn't bad. It's a light shade of dark green, if that makes any sense. It has a muted appearance. I'll post a picture soon. I was dreading some glossy version of the walls in my grade school cafeteria. I may not even paint it. I think light green-gray will contrast nicely with random orbital sanded aluminum skins.

I'll make some time to build my milling machine tool holder rack from the fiberglass tubing soon and I'll post pictures and comments for anyone who may want to try the fiberglass tubing for their own builds. The weak link is the complete lack of brackets and similar accessories. You're on your own! That's actually not too bad. It leaves me the flexibility to work with simple materials to make custom solutions. It's sort of like my preference for programming RISC microcontrollers by combining 32 simple instructions, as opposed to using a powerful and complicated visual object oriented programming language.

I'm evaluating various methods of joining the frame parts.

1) Insert 1" X 1" plastic inside the ends of the fiberglass tubing to reinforce it to prevent buckling, with clearance holes drilled on the top piece and tap holes for the screws on the bottom piece.

2) The .125" thick wall tubing is so stout that I doubt there will be any buckling. I may omit the plastic inserts, and simply drill clearance holes in the top and bottom of one piece of tubing, and tap holes in the top of the other piece of tubing, and screw the top piece to the bottom piece.

3) I may try a combination of 1 & 2, using a block only in the bottom piece, so the screw threads into the top surface on the bottom piece of fiberglass and the block of plastic within.

4) I may decide to drill tight clearance holes on all of the pieces (various possible combinations as listed above) and use three or four 2.75" long machine screws and nuts to secure each joint, instead of a wood screw or a screw intended to cut threads in plastic. It'd be easy to drill all clearance holes and simply bolt the frame together. That might be a good solution for joints that overlap but it wouldn't work at all for mitered joints.

5) I may cut 90 degree V shaped pieces of plastic with 1" square cross section so that a single plastic internal connector slips into both pieces of the tubing to be joined with a miter joint, with screws securing the fiberglass tubing to the plastic insert.

For permanent joints in any of the above scenarios, I may opt to sand the mating surfaces and paint both pieces with 5 minute epoxy to fill the gaps and provide a secondary bond that works in conjunction with the fasteners. The epoxy could be used to bind fiberglass to fiberglass, or fiberglass to plastic.

For my laser project, and many other projects I might build, the skins will also provide a lot of the strength, essentially acting as joining plates that are the full size of the project. They'll distribute any joint torque over the entire structure, rather than using a long length of tubing to concentrate the torque at the joint. It's similar to a monocoque construction, where the shell is structural. I can probably get by with 1"X1" tabs on a simple 90 degree L bracket for the inside of the joint, mostly to locate the parts while the skins are screwed into place. I can make a lot of these angle brackets very quickly from 1" aluminum angle, my chop saw, and the milling machine to drill & countersink the holes.

If I choose a method that doesn't use the angle brackets as a drill guide for each joint, I'll make a drill guide to make it easy to quickly and precisely drill the fiberglass tubing by hand, as I'm assembling it. That's much more conducive to my method of making it up as I go, which I still find to be faster and about as goof proof as using Solidworks to anally model a design.

And again... with the fiberglass square tubing... I'll never forget to drop a nut into the slot before bolting the rest of it together.



Skins For The Laser Frame

I was thinking about skins for my laser yesterday, as part of the frame design. I can probably find aluminum clad plastic at a local sign shop, but they'll want a decent markup on it. There are no sign shop suppliers nearby wholesaling this stuff. Even then, I'd still need to cut it, and I don't have a large CNC router... yet! Given that I'm leaning toward having structural skins to reinforce the frame, I'm thinking about using .0625" thick aluminum for the laser skins. It's not cheap, but it's not THAT bad. Considering I can quickly random orbital sand it to give it a nice matte brushed finish and I don't need to paint it, that might be the fastest and easiest solution, with only a little bit of extra money traded for the savings in time and offset by the savings in the cost of the paint I'm not using. Matte aluminum looks kinda cool.

I got a reference from a friend who is a very professional industrial machine builder (lots of robots, vision systems,etc.). He put me on to a machine shop in a small town about 75 miles away that apparently can receive my emailed DXF drawings, cut parts for me on their 3000W laser or water jet, and UPS the parts to me, cheaper than dealing with the local sheet metal fabricators. When the frame is designed and built, I'll give that a try. It'd be nice to avoid cutting sheet metal with a jig saw and drilling screw holes and exhaust vent holes by hand. That's not a good solution. If this place is good and cheap, I'll post a link to their website. I can't recommend them until I've worked with them on a job, but this might be a great option for builders who need custom skins or other sheet metal panels.



I still need to test my laser tube. Been busy!

[Liberty4Ever]

Ordered Materials For Laser Frame, Bed and Lid

I just placed a $705 order at McMaster-Carr. And I thought I was almost finished with only some little stuff left. Building a laser from scratch is a bit like buying a car a part at a time at Autozone. It's not the cheapest path to owning a laser. A lot of the cost advantages of the owner-builder route are eaten up in cost overruns when ordering onesie-twosie items, buying a minimum of 100 of something when you need four, etc.

Basically the exterior frame and much of the interior structure of my laser will be 1.25" square fiberglass tubing, held together with 1.5" X 1.5" X .25" thick aluminum angle that I'll cut into 1.00" to 1.25" wide custom angle brackets, each with six or eight screw holes. I'll test the pull-out strength of the self drilling self tapping screws in the 1/8" thick walled fiberglass tubing before deciding how many screws I need per angle bracket in each corner. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the strength of the frame will result from the structural skins once they're attached.

The laser bed itself will be made of 1" wide X 2" tall aluminum box tubing, with .125" thick walls. I didn't want to use fiberglass anyplace the laser could reach it. This frame will be along the outer perimeter of the perforated 24" X 48" stainless steel sheet that I'm using for the laser bed cutting surface, and the same box tubing will be used for two center supports. The frame will be .500" larger than the perforated stainless around the edges, and a .250" thick and .500" wide strip of aluminum will surround the perforated stainless to help secure the frame, but mostly to act as an edge guide for material being aligned when placed on the laser bed to be cut and engraved.

I also ordered the leveling feet, lid hinge, lid handle, etc.

The lid will be large and fairly heavy. I'd like to use air springs on the left and right edges that travel over center to hold the lid closed or open in two stable mechanical states, but I may use the weight of the lid to hold it closed and a simple weight sticking up on the back edge to hold the lid open when it's pivoted to the rear. I thought about clever ways to use linear actuators to open and close the door, but I wanted to keep it simple. I want to be able to open the lid to directly disable the laser without concern that the PC crashed and is ignoring my OPEN LID input.

Here's the stuff I ordered, with a few notes explaining how I plan on using this stuff. I have so many projects in the air at once that I'm starting to stumble over large slabs of aluminum and wonder, "What was this for? Oh yeah, it gets chopped up into six big heater blocks for the new anodizing line." The notes are largely for my own use in keeping track of why some of these materials were purchased. I need some better drawings and project notes. This is how we used to design and build stuff before Solidworks, kids.

The terse descriptions may be too cryptic to infer design intent. When I start assembling the parts, I'll take some pictures and I may annotate them with McMaster-Carr part numbers. That'll make more sense.

Code: Select all

Line    Quantity    Product    
   Ships    Unit price    Total    Delete
1    
32 each
   
8548K42
   
Structural Fiberglass Square Tube 1-1/4" X 1-1/4", 1/8" Wall Thickness, 5' Length
Laser frame, laser lid frame, etc.
   1 week
Need this sooner?
   $10.50 each    336.00    
2    
1 each
   
8982K86
   
Multipurpose Aluminum (Alloy 6061) 90 Deg Angle, 1/4" Thk, 1-1/2" X 1-1/2" Legs, 8' L
Angle brackets for fiberglass laser frame and aluminum laser bed frame.
   today    52.27 each    52.27    
3    
8 packs
   
90203A313
   
Pan Head Drilling Screw for Metal 410 SS, 8-18 Thread, 3/4" Length, Drill Point #2, packs of 50
Self drilling self tapping screws for angle brackets, for use with fiberglass and aluminum substrates.
   today    5.42 pack    43.36    
4    
6 each
   
1942K72
   
High Capacity Leveling Mount w/ SS Stud 1/4"-20 X 1-1/2" L Thread, 1-3/16" Base Dia
Feet for the laser frame, contact with the floor, leveling.
   today    5.11 each    30.66    
5    
1 ft.
   
8660K39
   
Chemical-Resistant Gray Type 1 PVC Rect Bar 1-1/4" Square
Material for machined inserts for the bottoms of the fiberglass legs, silicone adhesive to seal into place with machined lip on the bottom to engage the bottom of the leg, with 1/4-20 tapped hole in the center for the leveling foot.
   today    8.27 ft.    8.27    
6    
1 each
   
1575A75
   
Aluminum Piano Hinge with Holes Clear Anodized Fnsh,.060" Thk, 2" W, 6'Length
Full length hinge for the laser lid
   today    18.70 each    18.70    
7    
1 pack
   
90203A250
   
Pan Head Drilling Screw for Metal 410 SS, 6-20 Thread, 1/2" Length, Drill Point #2, packs of 100
Self drilling self tapping screws for the laser lid hinge.
   today    7.05 pack    7.05    
8    
1 each
   
1950A1
   
Choose-A-Color Pull Handle W/Through Hole Rectangular, Nylon, Gray Dots, 4-3/4" Ctr-to-Ctr
Handle for the laser lid, centered in the front.
   today    9.00 each    9.00    
9    
4 each
   
6546K393
   
Multipurpose Aluminum (Alloy 6061) Rect Tube 1/8" Wall Thickness, 1" X 2", 6' Length
Frame for the laser bed, with two center supports.  The perforated stainless laser bed screws down into the upper 1" wide surface of the 2" tall frame.
   today    42.06 each    168.24    
10    
1 pack
   
90065A108
   
Flat Head Phillips Screw for Sheet Metal 18-8 Stainless Steel, NO. 4 Size, 3/8" Length, packs of 100
Flat head screw to attach the perforated stainless laser bed to the laser bed frame.  Slight reaming of the perforation holes may be required when countersinking the top surface for the flat head screws.
   today    4.07 pack    4.07    
11    
2 each
   
89755K41
   
Architectural Aluminum (Alloy 6063) 1/4" Thick X 1/2" Width, 8' Length
Top edge strip for the laser bed frame.  Overlaps joints to help to secure them, but is mostly an alignment edge for material placed on the laser bed.
   today    8.42 each    16.84    
12    
1 pack
   
94195A120
   
Flat Head Drilling Screw for Metals 410 SS, 6-20 Thread, 3/4" Length, Drill Point #2, packs of 100
Self drilling self tapping screws to secure the top edge strip to the top of the laser bed frame.
   today    10.51 pack    10.51    


I still need to test fire the laser, and assemble and test the pre-engineered laser XY table before I can finalize the size of the exterior laser frame and some of the interior support structure and sheet metal baffling for the exhaust system.

I still need to buy the exhaust blower (probably the 1 HP dust collector from Harbor Fright) and the exterior skins and internal sheet metal baffles, but it really is past time to stop scratching my head designing stuff and buying stuff, and way past time to start building stuff.

I'm in an odd state where I'm piddling at building several simultaneous projects, and every time I start to work on any one of them, I'm thinking how nice it'd be if one of the other projects was finished so I could use it to build this project! Even worse, I keep finding excuses to build a 2' X 4' CNC router. Another project! Oh noes!

[Liberty4Ever]

The Agony Of Da Feet

I received $450 worth of structural parts today for my laser build, so tonight, I made some gray PVC inserts for the legs of the olive green fiberglass square tubing frame on my laser, to support the stainless and white plastic leveling feet. The inserts are tapped 1/4-20, and can be secured inside the fiberglass tubing with five minute epoxy or silicone sealant so they can't fall out when the laser is lifted off the ground.

It's some small progress.



Olive green fiberglass square tubing - McMaster-Carr #8548K42
Stainless and white plastic leveling feet - McMaster-Carr #1942K72
Square gray PVC stock for the inserts - McMaster-Carr #8660K39

I already had the stainless 1/4-20 nuts and stainless fender washers, but I bought them at McMaster-Carr too. I'm trying to use corrosion resistant components as much as possible, so almost everything is stainless, plastic, fiberglass, some aluminum, etc.

I'm sure those who buy the aluminum extrusion for the frame can just buy leveling feet, but they'd still need to tap the aluminum, it probably only took an hour for me to make nine of those gray PVC leg bottom inserts, and I avoided the online search for the feet that are compatible with the aluminum extrusion. Sometimes, it's easier to make exactly what you want. And if you build it, then it's truly yours.

Besides, I'm paying the builder penance for buying the XY table for my laser.

The rain has stopped, so I'll be back on the back yard shed tomorrow, so I can clear out the basement shop and have room to build a laser.

Maybe tomorrow night, I'll cut the 8' aluminum angle into a lot of short pieces and make a bunch of angle brackets that I'll use to secure the fiberglass frame at the joints. Or maybe I'll make my tool rack for my CNC milling machine project. There's no shortage of little projects for my multitude of simultaneous large projects.

[Liberty4Ever]

Angle Brackets For The Fiberglass Laser Frame

Well, my online business has been slamming lately, and I've had a few examples of life intervening, so my building has been slowed to a crawl. I did finally cut the heavy duty aluminum angle brackets for my laser frame and drilled the holes in them. It seems dumb to spend several hours making angle brackets, but I couldn't find what I wanted, and anything close was going to cost a few hundred dollars. I made 80+ angle brackets. They've been in the tumbler since 12:30 AM. Time to go see how they turned out! They turned out pretty good!

Rough cut from 1.5" X 1.5" aluminum angle, .25" wall thickness, using a carbide blade on my chop saw. This makes a very rude noise.



A big pile of them from an 8' extrusion!



Then onto the milling machine to face both cut edges for a nice surface finish and uniform width (not shown). I love the Tormach SuperFly carbide insert cutter for jobs like this. No chipping of the carbide insert, even on this very interrupted cut, and it provided a nearly mirrored surface finish, even with me dry cutting. My only complaint is the way it slings chips all over the basement. I need to build a chip containment guard for my milling machine.

Then, use the milling machine to drill eight clearance holes in each bracket for the self drilling self tapping stainless screws. At this point, I was wishing I had already done the CNC conversion of my milling machine, as turning the handles was tedious.



After drilling the holes, I used a cordless drill to manually countersink the backs of the eight holes (not shown).

Here they are after the machining.



And here they are after the tumble cleaning and deburring.



I have a large hobby rotary tumbler with something like 20 pounds of small stainless pins. I add a few gallons of water, a couple of ounces of dish washing detergent and half a teaspoon of Lemishine, and let it tumble for 12-24 hours. After about 15 hours, the nasty mill finish was removed, and the sharp wire edges from the facing operation were still crisp but no longer sharp. Very nice.





Here are the McMaster-Carr parts I'm using to make my laser frame.

Code: Select all

1   8548K42   32 Each   Structural Fiberglass Square Tube, 1-1/4" X 1-1/4", 1/8" Wall Thickness, 5' Length
2   8982K86   1 Each   Multipurpose Aluminum (alloy 6061), 90 Deg Angle, 1/4" Thk, 1-1/2" X 1-1/2" Legs, 8' L
3   90203A313   8 Packs   Pan Head Drilling Screw For Metal, 410 Ss, 8-18 Thread, 3/4" Length, Drill Point #2


In retrospect, the .250" thick angle brackets are probably overkill. The screws will pull out of the fiberglass long before the angle brackets even think about bending. 3/16" or even 1/8" thick angle may have been a better choice.

Everyone else is posting with major progress on their builds, and I'm posting some brackets I made. So sad.

More good stuff coming soon!

I looked at a furnace blower today to possibly use as an exhaust blower, and while the power is good (about 1 HP), I think the blower design isn't rated for enough static pressure. I'll probably get the Hazard Fraught 1 HP dust collector to use as my laser exhaust.