effective laser air assist for power diode lasers many times output

thingiverse

The License Elements of this Public License are Attribution, NonCommercial, and ShareAlike. Licensor means the individual(s) or entity(ies) granting rights under this Public License. NonCommercial means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation. I will also be selling these soon, but feel free to make one for yourself and experiment with design. I have about 20-30 revisions, and a whole lot of learning costs. I'm placing faith in the community. Just no selling, thanks for understanding. This design allows a much higher amount of air flow over laser cut parts and prevents flame, and large kerf areas. The blower is designed to inflate rafts and bed mattresses in about a minute. It says to run for only 20 minutes, but the blower is under very little load from the design and I have run it for hours at a time with no issue. This design allows high flow of air thru a large sized nozzle at the focus point of laser surface to move the particulate out of the way from the surface, and allow a longer laser life, and cleaner and deeper cuts. I am making this design open source for people interested in printing for themselves, or that have the skill and the patience to put all parts together. There is some assembly know how required, and costs of the air pump, and tubing. The nozzle assembly is in 4 parts: adjustable holder with tube inlet and zip tie holder, connecting nozzle extender, nozzle with flat end facing towards work surface, and nob that has a bolt inset to it for holding nozzle extender end in place. The tube is 1/2 inch tubing 5 to 6 feet in length. It has 2 inch wide painters tape wrapped around it to prevent that part from bending. Then a zip tie is wrapped around and tightened so tube can not move. It can flex a little from the tightness, the tape wrapped around will prevent it from flattening. The clips go inside the bearing spaces, and help keep them tight to prevent slop. This is needed from additional strain of tubing and flexing. Installing these clips increases accuracy of motion. The other end of tube is pressed into air adapter fitting piece. This piece is secured to the blower of the air pump, which should have two wraps of electrical tape wrapped around it before putting adapter on to keep it secure. The size at the nozzle end is 8mm by 8mm. This reduces load on motor and is optimized for maximum air flow over laser area. The flat end of the nozzle end piece should be facing down towards the surface of part to be cut or engraved. It should be between 1mm-6mm above the surface. As long as the flow of the nozzle is centered to the center of the laser, it should be okay. Extra washers are included in my design so assembly can be moved in and out depending on amount of washers used, and the adapter has the ability to adjust up and down 1inch.