El Cheapo 50cmx 40cm 500mW Laser Build and Modifications

In this Instructable I will show you how I put together a cheap Chinese 500mW 50cm x 40cm Laser Engraver, I have a Neje 30Watt Laser and I'm modding this laser so they are Interchangeable.

Ebay description is 500MW CNC Laser Engraving Machine 40X50cm Wood Logo Desktop Cutting Engraver DIY

I purchased this laser because of the size of it, 50cm x 40cm is a good size and I paid approx £113 or $141 which is pretty good, the 500mW laser wont be up to much but it will be ok for engraving text and patterns etc where as the Neje 30W laser will be good for cutting things out and engraving of course.

I'm not doing an unboxing, I don't see the point with that, but what I will say is on opening the box everything was nicely packaged.

On with the first part of the build:

500MW CNC Laser Engraving Machine 40X50cm Wood Logo Desktop Cutting Engraver DIY

Neje 30Watt Laser

Laser Glasses

The first thing to do is lay out the components on a table and check the parts list to ensure everything is there, from then on we can get on with the build.

The first part of the build is assembling the X Axis laser carrier, following the manual this is an easy build and what I like about this carrier is the the front plate which holds the laser module is easily removeable without disturbing the V-Slot wheels, the plate which the laser is screwed to is easily removed with 2 Locknuts this will come in really handy when I design another front plate to accommodate the Neje Laser. The next task is to slide the laser carrier along the correct size extrusion, this is well documented in the manual, after that you select the correct length GT2 belt and slide it under the wheel and over the pulley so the the teeth on the belt are aligned with the teeth on the pulley, there are square tapped square washers which slide into the extrusion on top of the belt and an small Allen head bolt is used to secure each end of the belt after adding some tension.

The 2 Y Axis modules can now be built up, once again these are really straight forward following the manual and once the modules are assembled they can be secured to each end of the X axis, get these the right way round, look at the profile in the manual for confirmation.

The main framework can now be assembled.

The main framework is easy to assemble, assemble on a flat even surface and pay particular attention to the square tapped washers which need to be inserted into the outer side of the end extrusions, these are for the feet which are secured with 2 Allen head bolts one hole being tapped in the end of the extrusion, and an additional 2 for securing the Electrics PCB to the extrusion.

With the 4 internal angles fitted and everything square the X axis can now be slid down the Y axis extrusions, with this in place the belts can be fitted, same procedure as the X axis, then the last thing to do is fasten the 4 feet in place on the ends...Job done.

Initial testing:

The PCB for the electrics is sandwiched between 2 pieces of Acrylic and then mounted to the rear extrusion, stepper motor cables and the cable for the laser can now be inserted, I used some spiral wrap on each cable just for extra protection but this is optional of course.

There is a Free Software download for the laser called Vigoworks but I didn't bother with this, I would use either LaserGRBL or in my case Lightburn.

First thing to notice is that the Laser is a long way from any surface and I had to build this up so that the Laser to the surface to be engraved was approx 50mm, I may design some sort of a sliding arrangement to make this part easier, there is a focus button, pressing this shows a dot, this needs to be as small and clear as possible for a good cut.

Another thing to notice is that there are no end stop limit switches with this laser kit, so you cant home the machine, what I ended up doing in Lightburn was starting from the bottom left hand corner of the workpiece and setting this as the origin each time.

I upped the power to 100% and a relatively low speed and pressed start, off it went and it did everything as planned, a nicely engraved text with no scorching, I had a job already planned for this laser, its to engrave 7 pieces of 3mm plywood 275mm x 250mm for wedding table seating layouts, setting these out in VCarve and exporting the files as dxf, they could now be imported into Lightburn, and it engraved these with ease, the text font I used for these seating layouts is Monotype Corsiva, it's a nice font for Wedding based items.

The next part will cover the summary and the modifications to be made.

Now for the modifications:

Both the Vevor 500mW laser and the Neje 30Watt will be interchangeable, I will design and 3D print another laser mount for the Neje, undoing 2 locknuts will be an easy exchange and unplugging the power and signal cable of course, but the same cable can be used or so I thought.

The Neje30Watt laser wouldn't work with the original PCB at first that was my fault, I failed to noticed that that the 12v Gnd and Signal are the other way round on the Neje PCB, Modding this with defont cables cured it for now, but needs a more permanent solution, thinking cap on!

I will design and 3D print an adjustable slider for moving the lasers up and down at some point, this should make things easier with the various depths of items to engrave or cut, but it looks like both Lasers need to be approx 50mm away from the work Piece.

A future Modification will be using a different board.

I would like to use limit switches so I can home the machine which means using either the Grbl CNC Shield with an Arduino Uno and the grbl software downloaded onto the Uno or another board, this way we can have limit switches giving us a definite starting position each time.

This is for a future upgrade, I have an Arduino Uno and shield all set up after using it on a home built drawing machine and quite like the idea of having a multi use Laser/Drawing machine.

My thoughts.

My overall impression with firstly the packaging which was good, secondly the build which was straight forward, this is a cheap basic laser engraver but there is a manual ok it's basic but pretty much straight forward, all the main details are covered, The make of this Laser Engraver is Vevor so I'm saying its a Chinese company but looking online it says both Shanghai and America head offices so I'm not sure, the documentation is good which to be honest you don't normally get with Chinese equipment so who knows.
As for the laser engraving, this worked well after initial set up and turned out some lovely wedding Table Plans. So overall I am happy with this purchase, It does what it says on the tin!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and thanks for looking.