Homebrew Air Assist

[Dave Yanke]

Yep, working on a tight budget.

I have seen a couple threads asking if a home brew air assist is possible and they all say search on "air assist" to see how to do it. Can not find anything so am sort of in a circular reference.

Is it possible? I have a ULS VLS 4.60 and another $2K plus is, well...ouch.

[Scott Shepherd]

Humm...that's a tough one. Probably depends on many factors, such as your abilities to make parts (milling machine/lathe/etc.). I can't speak from any real point of reference other than to say that the air assist others have made are more of a sweep air assist, where it's just a tube blowing on the material. The ULS air assist is very different than that. It takes the air though the lens/mirror assembly and pushes it directly through where the beam comes out. So you have a nose cone and the air is coming out of the nose cone, and the beam is actually coming through the center of that nose cone as well.

If you run the machine with the nose cone off and the air on, it sucks material right into the lens. If you run it with the nose cone on and the air off, it sucks material up into the lens.

So I guess you'd need to decide what you're trying to do, build one that mimmicks the ULS version or if you plan on just trying to install an air sweep system.

Either way, you might want to check and see if it will void your warranty if you install it.

[Mark Winlund]

There are time when I wish I had two air assists... one through the nose cone, and one a directional one to direct smoke away from the already engraved areas. Or perhaps a suction tube to pull the smoke up and out before it can condense on the workpiece.

Mark

[Dave Yanke]

So maybe this leads to another question. We have had difficulties with where we bought our machine from (no training, support dismal, lack of response when asking for pricing, etc.), who is a good a supplier for getting the ULS air assist? I am not even sure the pricing I am being quoted is correct since it had changed several times over the past few weeks.

[Margaret Turco]

Dave, where are you located?

[Ramon Carrizosa]

We are making one for our Epilog Radius, will be happy to let you know the results. We have all the toys necessary, CNC Mills and Lathes, Rapid Prototype FDM Machine.

[Charlie Bice]

Ramon,

Show what you do. I've been looking at modifying my Legend the same way.

And, yep machine ship is available.

charlie

[Dave Yanke]

Dave, where are you located?

About 70 miles west of Chicago.

[Jeff Saltzman]

Curious if any of you got homebrew air assists working-- any drawings, photos, or videos to share?

With my air scrubber mostly complete, I'm starting on air assist for my Summit, but all I have is an old Gast compressor and some half-baked ideas.

Routing the hose into the case and to the lens is the first order of business and I wonder what folks have gotten working; I imagine cable and hose carriers would do the trick, like this Igus E08 series:
http://www.igus.com/iPro/iPro_01_000....htm?c=US&l=en

Any clues would be very much appreciated!