Today, we’re going to give you a few tips and some good videos that will help you get your laser engraver assembled without throwing your tools across the room!😆

I had to laugh as I wrote this because it reminded me of a guy that I used to work with at one of the steel mills I used to work at, Tom was his name...

He was a great guy with a lot of mechanical knowledge and ability, but he was not fun to be around when he got upset! I don’t always have the best temper either, but this guy took the cake! 

He would get blood red in the face with anger if things weren’t working out, and actually throw his tools across the mill! This, of course, would have the rest of us cracking up further angering poor Tom. 

It really stunned me back then, because Tom always carried high end Snap-On tools! He even had the Snap-On guy coming to his house to sell him these crazy expensive tools!  

It was shocking to me at the time as I was still a struggling apprentice, barely able to afford good tools at all. I couldn’t believe he would treat those expensive tools that way! 

Anyway, enough about Tom. Let’s focus here on the few things we wanted to share with you to make this assembly an easy one! 

My best suggestion, for starters, would be to get a couple select high-quality hand tools for assembling your machine. All you should need is a nice set of T-handle metric Allen wrenches and a nice multi-bit screwdriver. 

I like to suggest the T-handle Allen wrenches because the small ones that come with your machine can get annoying to work with after a while. That’s not the frame of mind you want to be in when you’re trying to work your way through getting your laser assembled! 

You’ll want to get all your hardware laid out in an organized manner where you’ll be able to find it quickly when you need it. With the Sculpfun and Ortur lasers there really isn’t much hardware at all. 

We’ve included two separate videos below, one for the Sculpfun S9 laser and one for the Ortur Laser Master Pro 2. I suggest having them pulled up while you’re building your laser so that you can pause and start the video 97 times as you go!😁

Try to set aside an afternoon or evening to get your laser assembled just so you’re not feeling rushed or getting sidetracked.

Take your time and enjoy the process, you’re building a high-quality instrument here with a huge amount of potential for all the various engraving and cutting projects you’ll be able to create now! 

Once you get your laser engraver completely assembled, you’re going to want to check that your entire frame is square, this is a very important step that you don’t want to skip once you have all of your bolts are nice and tight. You can use a framing square or a tape measure to check for square. 

If you’re using a tape measure, you’re going to want to measure from corner to corner and make sure that your measurements are exactly the same!

If they’re not, you’re going to want to loosen the bolts at the corner that is out of square and do some tweaking. It shouldn’t take long to get everything dialed in though. 

Lastly, once you have your belts in place and tightened down, you’re going to want to do what’s called the “tilt test” to ensure that you have the proper tension set with your belts.

If they’re too loose your belt will skip a tooth on the stepper motor gears. You will feel it skip a tooth as you move your laser head along the X and Y axis. Tighten the belt until that goes away. 

Now if your belts are too tight, you’ll be able to tell by lifting and tilting the frame of your machine to about 30-45 degrees. At this point, your laser module should slide easily along the X axis. Then, by tilting in the opposite direction your gantry should slide easily along the Y axis as well. 

If you’re having any problems at this point you are more than welcome to reach out to us via our support channel atsupport@modernelectronica.com and we’ll help you out with any kind of obstacles you may be running into! 

Please refer to the videos below to help you along!

Sculpfun S9 assembly video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-mcIIFUpUE&list=FLOmknZeMP7M_psN2DNTgpoA&index=2&t=6s

Ortur Laser Master Pro assembly video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI5l1oP7xVg&list=FLOmknZeMP7M_psN2DNTgpoA&index=1