DIY 600x420mm ENCLOSED laser cutter part 0 - project overview and design

Get sheet metal parts laser cut and bent at www.pcbway.com/ It's time to finally start a new project! For about a year and a half I've been designing my first laser cutter - for safety, despite only being powered a simple 5W laser diode, it'll be a fully enclosed machine with air assist and fume extraction. As opposed to my unipolar 3D printer project I'm not trying to prove a point here, so the linear motion system will be made with POM W-style roller bearings running on 20x20mm square aluminum tubing for the linear rails, driven by cheaply manufactured 48 step/revolution bipolar stepper motors via M6 stainless steel threaded rod as lead screws. If I were to redesign this machine these days, I would probably go for the standard Nema 17 stepper in a direct belt drive arrangement, but since it took me this long to just get the design to the point it's at now, I won't change anything as fundamental as this anymore. With lead screws the machine will be slow, which is annoying for the homing sequence, but for cutting outlines of parts like I intend to do, I'll have to go sub-10mm/s anyway with a laser module as weak as what I'm using.
If you want to help support the channel directly to help make bigger projects like this possible, consider checking out my patreon: www.patreon.co...
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