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Modding the Chinese K40 Laser Engraver, Part 4:



Finally, after a few minutes of tweaking, I was able to get the beam reasonably well centered through the
cutting head. Again, it'll need to be fine-tuned later, but this will work for the moment.



Next up, I tried plugging in the "dongle", assuming that it would carry the software I needed to operate the
machine, but no dice. I plugged it in, the laptop bleedle-deeped like it knew I'd plugged something in, the
dongle started blinking.... and that was pretty much it. No software prompts, no files to execute, nothing.

And no disc or other software source was included with the laser, nothing was emailed to me by the seller,
and nothing was listed on the seller's eBay ad.

Which was not any sort of a problem, as I 'd already had several people recommend K40 Whisperer as
an alternative operating system. Looking at my controller board it was at the top of the list of ones
compatible with Whisperer, so I went ahead and loaded that up.



I also needed to replace the spring-loaded table supplied with the laser. I found a seller on eBay offering a
honeycomb table for a reasonable price....



But let's just say I wasn't overly impressed with the dude's attention to detail. It's functional, but it's uuuugly.



I also found, while rooting through a local secondhand shop, an aquarium air pump, and a length of
coiled air hose probably meant for a basketball air pump or something.



The pump will supply a small volume of air for an "air assist" nozzle, and the coiled hose makes a nice compact way
to connect that nozzle to the air supply, while keeping the hose out of the way of the X/Y carriage. I'll have to
do a little experimenting to make sure the coils don't bind or try to pull the cutter head out of position, but
it'll likely be easier than trying to install cable chains.