Benbox Laser Machines/CO2 Lasers/3D Printers

I read the product reviews specific to cutting with lasers. The only power references were to 40W and above machines. The glue is also rated for dampness resistance which makes me think it is not applicable for low power lasers.

Have you tried cutting 3mm basswood? What speed and power?

I recall there being a topic on what can be cut on this forum.

How many passes does your 2.5W take to cut 3mm laser ply?

I have a cheap 15W and it currently has 2 major problems:

  1. The vendor specified not to operate at more that 50% duty. Very poorly defined
      expression but I expect it means they just overpowered a 7W diode.
  2. It has a very poor focus. Most of these diodes are fabricated from multiple laser elements.
      You can see the individual dots.

It will burn with a large kerf. I use the machine for etching slates with patterns that do not include fine lines and etching test images in cardboard at high speed.

The price of a 40W CO2 laser machine is less than a 10W diode laser from Endurance.  It is physically much larger and requires water cooling but is much better suited for cutting 3mm material.

I would suggest soldering between the "-" & "PWM" pads on the three pin header. That is the YELLOW & BLACK wires.

Are you still interested in doing an ESP32 to Nano footprint adapter board.

The NodeMCU-32S is a 38 pin device and the span is 0.9 inch. I believe the ESP32 development board is 1.0 inch as the physical board is about 29mm wide.

1. Moved the step, dir, and limit switch I/O pins  to makes cleaner layout. Easy changes to GRBL.
2. Used a dual range voltage regulator with a jumper to select either 3.3 or 5.0V.
3. With ESP32 I drive the steppers with 3.3V. The ESP is NOT 5V tolerant!!

Attached are my current schematics. Has not been verified or tested in any manner!!!

I am in the similar position. Decided to make a board with both the 38-pin ESP32 and 30-pin Nano footprints. I suspect your scheme is easier, especially as it mates with existing controller boards. You probably need to augment the logic (3.3V) power supply. There is an older post on the ESP32 group about someone who was porting the 38-pin ESP module to the Nano footprint. Never heard the result.

For those who are unfamiliar with the ESP32 footprints there are 6 pins on the 38-pin modules that are also used to access the onboard flash memory which is used for program execution. If your program is small enough to fit in the cache memory it might be OK to use them. Otherwise crash.

I have had good results with 1/32 birch plywood available at Michaels and other craft stores. The lower power setting have little effect but the middle has more. Stainng or applying a pre-stain reduces the effective range. You also have to play with the burn speed.

Did you stain or otherwise prepare the wood? Shading is very much medium dependent.

I don't understand 0 acceleration. Is it a grbl feature to not do the acceleration profile?