Well, I had a brief moment where I was posting here fairly regularly but then I got sidetracked. You would think in the middle of a pandemic I could be a little bit more disciplined about posting on schedule. One reason is that while staying home I stumbled on a video ad for the Gloforge laser engraving machine. I thought what is this magical machine? Then I searched for it and saw the price tag and was like well that’s a bit out of my price range. Another downside to it is that the software that runs it is cloud based. If your internet goes out for any reason the machine is just a 4000 dollar brick until it comes back up or if the company itself goes out business the machine is worthless. So still intrigued by the idea of doing laser engraving at home I started looking at alternatives. I found the Chinese made CO2 laser machines known as the K40. The price of these were much more reasonable starting around $350. A bit more research revealed that to really make those usable it would take another 3-400 dollars worth of upgrades right out of the box. New mirrors, better exhaust fans and air pumps, a better water cooling system, etc. While doing the research I also came across the open frame diode laser built by Ortur. While not as powerful it has a larger work area and is much more portable. I went ahead and bought one of those a month or so ago. I rigged up an enclosure and exhaust system for the smoke and have been in the process of learning the software and doing test burns since. I’m pretty close to being ready to start selling. I’ll be using my Aberration Studio site for that.
