This is genius! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
I have 1m x 1m laser cutter in my garage with 40 W (15W optical output) diode-laser. It cuts 2-3mm plywood Ok, but I gave up on cutting 5mm read oak plywood. After reading this article, I wen to my garage, found there an old cheap car tire compressor and medical plastic IV pipe. I heated up the pipe with heat gun and pulled it, which thinned it, and cut it. I have got a nice nozzle. I cut off the tire connector and attached hose to the pipe using some bronze connector. There is no super-high pressure, so no extreme measures are required. Then I feed the pipe through the cable track and mounted the nozzle near the laser, and plugged the compressor to 12V power supply. That all was pretty quick. Observations:
– I monitor laser cutting via WiFi camera. Without compressor, it looks like a rock show or a battle field due to smoke. With compressor it looks pretty clean.
– One of a sudden, laser cuts much better! It cut through 5mm plywood like a champ!
– The cut is much cleaner on the top side! (but the bottom side of the plywood looks like epoxy melted and leaked. I guess, I am using wrong type of plywood)
– I was concerned that vibrating air produced by tire compressor would cause all kind of problems. But it works just fine. You can buy that airbrush compressor if you want to, but it is not necessary.
Wow! This is must-have upgrade for a laser cutter! It makes your laser cut 1.5x better for next to nothing.