Any Fiber Laser Successes?

We were at fabtech last week and were shocked at how affordable (in relation to 5 years ago) fiber lasers have gotten, especially the imported chinese ones. One thing that I noticed is that all of the decent chinese ones used Max Photonics laser head & source. We all know the imported chinese lasers can vary on quality, reliability, and parts/service.

So that led to the question: Why not buy an older name brand CO2 laser (mazak, amada, bystronic, etc...) and retrofit it with LinuxCNC, new servos & drives, and a Max Fiber laser source and head? A lot of places are practically giving away older CO2 lasers that work just fine, which would be a perfect starter. That way it is a better built machine with modern controls and laser, for most likely less money than a chinese import laser. 

Has anyone successfully done this yet? We did a Mazak VTC mill earlier this year and are absolutely thrilled with how it turned out running Probe Basic.

There is a sticky of a laser build in this section.
If you are using probe basic, consider using Monokrom (despite my earlier off forum advice)

Would Monokrom be a better choice since the customizability is similar to Probe Basic?

djones@burketruck.com wrote:

Would Monokrom be a better choice since the customizability is similar to Probe Basic?

Monokrom is still a bit of a work in progress but the basics work. For you the advantage is its a qtpyvcp gui like probe basic so perhaps there is a case to use it. Plus you will need to do some customizing so a full featured plasma config is not really useful... Monokrom still uses the plasma real time component so it can do anything qtplasmac can do.

Got it. Is there a main repo that is being worked on currently? I see there are a couple of repos out there.

Its part of qtpyvcp www.qtpyvcp.com/showcase/plasma_vcps.html