Original subtitles

hey welcome back to geek toolkit I know

it's been a while I moved I'll talk

about it in another video for this one

we're going to focus on this laser right

here this is a Wayne Lux jl7 it's a 10

watt diode laser we do another review

but we're also gonna have some fun with

this one we're going to talk about uh

basically making puzzles uh this is one

of the projects I did with this one I

also made a clock

we'll talk a little bit about why clocks

and puzzles are really good test for

this and where it did well where it

didn't uh we'll also talk a little bit

about the other materials here I've got

a purse

this first year was made for my daughter

she wanted a Bluey purse so I put her

name on the back of it

but that was a nice leather test for

this I tried to go through as many

materials as I could on this thing and

also just to come up with some different

projects we'll also talk about Metal

minerals are really uh popular one

people like to tell me about how uh dial

lasers they think connect metal and they

can't so we'll talk a little bit about

why that is a good test and why it's

special and also we'll talk about

performance this piece right here this

was a half inch we'll talk a bit about

this uh there was something I realized

when when people do the testing on these

lasers that they don't say on video that

I'm gonna I'll talk about but I want to

get into first what is this laser what

makes it special what's different then

I'll talk about the Assembly of this

laser how it went putting it together

I'll talk a little bit about the

instructions there were some interesting

things in there then we'll talk about

the performance I've got some really

cool things here uh we'll talk about

these like performance grids and I'll

tell you about how it did as far as a 10

watt laser and the depth of focus and

then finally we'll talk about these

projects and just basically just go

through this so you know every laser

I've tested something different about it

there was some feature or something that

it did and I'm not just talking about

like end stops but there was something

about the behavior of the laser and what

it made me realize is that these reviews

are really important because their each

laser has its own like almost

personality or something it's really

really good at and this laser is no

different uh there's also things that

other lasers have that this one doesn't

we'll talk about that as well at the end

first thing I want to talk about is the

features of this laser what makes this

laser unique from the other I don't know

I think I'm like five or six reviews

I've done in the dozens of reviews out

there well Wayne Lux has made a couple

of interesting decisions with their

laser one of them is they have what I

call a dual firmware support and what

that means is this laser has firmware

that it comes with that has features

that are not in a gerbil or an open

source firmware one of them for instance

is this has Bluetooth built in and you

can actually connect to this laser with

your phone and without a PC at all you

can control this laser and actually take

images off your phone you can take them

off the internet download them to your

phone you can take photos whatever you

want and you can actually etch them into

the laser now that's kind of nice you

don't have to worry about like getting

some kind of external uh third-party

software or learning that it basically

becomes like a phone app controlling the

laser and I was able to take a very

simple picture off the Internet very

quickly uh I'm showing you here on this

camera just to show you near the quality

Point good the engraving was uh nice it

was very easy to use program and it it

worked

the thing for me personally is a lot of

the tools I use such as light burn or

the things that generate puzzles or

boxes and such are on a PC and so that's

where I personally would like to see

this used now here's the cool thing

the firmware that this has they support

a tool to flash it over to gerbil and

back so you can you can basically go

back and forth between the two

it's an interesting thing I haven't seen

any other lasers do that the benefit of

that is if you want to use open source

tools or stuff you're familiar with or

very powerful tools you can but if you

want to use their software and go back

to

um you know or being able to use it from

a phone and stuff you can do that as

well now there's one downside of this

and I'll mention it again at the end but

the main thing is at the time that I'm

filming this you're not able to do any

of the rotary stuff now rotary is an

add-on that you can do to actually etch

things like around things like like

water bottles stuff like that you can't

do the rotary in light burn or anything

in the gerbil software so that is a

basically a very important downside to

understand

then do a firmware thing and the ability

to use the phone and Bluetooth though

very unique works very well but what I

want to talk about is for the rest of

this video I'll talk about the gerbil

side of this I'm going to do a lot of

stuff in light burn I'll talk about that

as well the other thing I want to

mention is this is a 400 millimeter by

400 millimeter laser it's just over 15

inches quite a lot of Cutting Room uh

very large a lot of lasers I looked at a

bit about that that area but it's good

to see that this thing is staying in

that spec it is a larger Laser Now Wayne

locks as a company has been making

lasers for a while they do have a lot of

what are called uh Galva lasers they do

stuff like that and those lasers

typically have a smaller area so it's

cool to see this size of a laser another

thing about this is it does support an

SD card you can use the phone to do that

it does not have an LCD panel however it

also does not have an air assist so

those are two things that this does not

come with did not have it didn't come

with the rotary though I believe like I

said there is a rotary attachment you

can get for it

um but those are just some things that

it was lacking in the way it came for me

I do like the LCD panels for doing

things with offline in the case of this

laser what you would do if you want to

do offline uh cutting is you'd plug in

the SD card you'd keep their firmer on

there and you would use your phone to

control it I want to talk about assembly

now there's not much here there's three

screws on each of these four corners and

then there's a couple of screws here for

your Z on either side you've got one two

here and one two here those screws once

that's together the entire laser is

assembled there's nothing else really to

it the laser part here is adjustable

with this so not only is the assembly

that simple but basically that just

locks in and then when you've got your

height when you're dialing it in

of course I can't do this on camera

huh

so this here you unscrew it and this

comes out

in and you can tighten it up so it's

very easy to not only assemble but

that's also how you focus the lasers

with this here

the other thing about this laser it's

important compared to other lasers uh

the belts are actually built into these

sides and you don't have to assemble

them yourself they also have a very

easily uh adjustments on here for

adjusting the belt tightness that's

important because I have to use the

laser for a while you're going to want

to adjust it it's nice to have to not to

not have to disassemble the entire belt

you simply adjust it here and the laser

is all dialed in one other thing I want

to talk about for assembly and just kind

of the first run of this laser is the

instruction book is very very well done

the thing about the instructions on this

is it actually goes through not only the

Assembly of the laser but it goes

through how to use the firmware flashing

back and forth and then it even takes it

further and says how to set it up in

light burn and Laser gerbal and software

like that I thought that was really cool

to have them go all those extra steps to

explain how to set up that software that

just makes it much easier to use for

beginners and one of the things I'm

always talking about on these videos is

like who are the these lasers for is

this an advanced laser a beginner laser

this laser is interesting with the 10

watts of power the two five watt uh

diodes on here it has limit switches

which I've talked about in the past but

if you don't know a limited switch means

that when this moves over you hear that

click

that is a switch that tells the laser

it's moved all the way over on the

x-axis and it has another one here on

the Y so when it comes down here

you hear that click there now the laser

knows where zero zero is that's called

the limit switch that is great for both

repeatability for advanced users and for

beginners to make sure that the laser

you don't have to worry about it going

off the rails and grinding or damaging

itself it will always stay and know

where it's at

um it's also one of the things I'll talk

about when I get to puzzles I'll talk

about why that repeatability is so

important I want to talk about

performance next now performance wise

we're going to talk about it with the

pure numbers of what it does for cuts

and then we're going to talk about how

it did on these projects here and I'll

start going through all of these

projects this right here is basically a

grid for cut cutting speeds here's

another one here this is an eighth inch

grid and this is a quarter inch grid now

the thing about these grids here is on

this one here on one pass for an eighth

inch you can see I went up to 327

millimeters per minute and was able to

cut all the way through on a single pass

with eight inch that means now eighth is

very common to do a lot of projects in

and that means they can do them very

very quickly and reliably know I'm going

to make it all the way through that is

very important now quarter inch

sometimes the laser won't even make it

through a quarter inch or I don't have

to do a bunch of passes but at 100

millimeters per minute this thing went

through a quarter inch reliably now the

intro video that I started with this

geek toolkit this is also a quarter inch

and it went through at 150 millimeters

now I want to talk about let me talk

about half inch and I'll tell you about

why this keep toolkit was so important

this is a half inch it cut through on

one pass in two directions I'm sorry in

two lines

the horizontal lines it went through in

one pass on a quarter inch the vertical

lines took four passes okay now that was

very now this is Basswood this is one of

the softer Woods recommended for lasers

but that is very very important and I'm

going to tell you something about this

uh discovery that you'll know you'll

you'll once you know this you'll you'll

every other laser review you ever look

at you'll notice something about what

they say in their material and the

reviews that they don't mention

lasers I'm sorry dial lasers have a

non-square uh basically focal point and

what that means is they're typically

performed differently horizontally

versus vertically so the two directions

matter

this one horizontally went all the way

through a half inch in one pass but when

it went vertical it was not as powerful

now the reason I say this is you'll see

demos on videos on other channels where

they'll show a laser go through a half

inch on one pass and they'll be like it

cuts through you know whatever it is 12

millimeters or whatever in one pass

that's not true and it's useless info

that's only true if you're gonna use it

like a freaking circular saw the actual

reliability of going through a piece of

wood or piece of material matters on a

curve or on both directions

um again unless you're using like Sergio

saw that's why this geek toolkit was

such an important test this is quarter

inch in one pass but you can see it went

through all sorts of different uh

directions and so on to get through you

know the letters are all different uh uh

directions the K is a different

direction the G is a curve and it went

through on One path very very important

to know that

um now I'm gonna leave that I'm going to

take that I'm gonna lead into puzzles

and why I love puzzles now puzzles have

a whole bunch of different directions

and the thing I learned about making

puzzles on a laser is if you don't go

through in one pass it gets messed up

really really badly I'll show you an

example here this is a puzzle where I

took a piece of wood I glued a piece of

paper onto it and then I cut it and the

thing about this piece here and I'll

make sure it goes on this laser here is

you can actually see that when the piece

fell the laser kept going and it cut

another puzzle piece out of that that

puzzle that was basically on the floor

of the laser

that basically ruins the puzzle you end

up with a second puzzle engraved into it

you have to be able to cut a puzzle in

one pass or you have to use what's

called like a needle board or something

related

so

that count takes me to this puzzle here

now a little background of this puzzle

I'm a huge Commodore 64 fan and chronus

Rift and Legacy of the Ancients were two

of my favorite games and when I realized

they can make a puzzle as a demo project

I wanted to come up with something

unique

now the thing is if you take the cross

Rift box art that you find on the

internet and you scale it up to make a

puzzle out of it it looks horrible you

really want a very sharp image for a

puzzle so I actually ran this through

some AI uh you ran it through gigapixel

from topaz Labs made a nicer image out

of it and then was able to take that and

print it out now I printed it this is my

legacy of the Ancients one of my test

prints here I printed it out in color

and then what I would do is I would cut

that out as a puzzle I would basically

uh glue this to a piece of wood overlay

a puzzle at the same size until the

laser would go through the laser I

needed to cut in one pass I needed to be

able to cut all of the curves I needed

to cut accurately and not Char the paper

and what you can see here is I have this

beautiful chronus Rift puzzle

which I'm so giddy about right like I

would never be able to go buy this I you

know this isn't something where epics is

going to come back out and say yes let's

go make an MX2 based version of piranhas

Rift but eighth inch wood and it cut

through beautifully now I'll do a

separate uh video on on the details of

how I did this the software and all but

it's a very very powerful I think demo

of showing the reliability of being able

to go through eighth inch wood or even

quarter inch I did make a quarter inch

puzzle and it did go through in one pass

these are little pieces I learned a lot

about this right these are way too

little and also there's a reason that

puzzles are not a quarter inch thick

um this was incredibly hard to to put

together the other thing I tried to do

here is I tried to do a wood engraving

and then do a puzzle uh which removes of

course all the color it makes it you

know almost grayscale and I realize

there's a bit of an art making puzzles

you really need the Right image so that

failed I'll talk again about about that

more later but I was able to make a

puzzle with this and that was one of my

projects I did I was excited about for

this video and this laser did

wonderfully for I look forward to making

many more puzzles and I'll share those

later

now besides puzzles I did do leather

so let's talk about leather uh leather

this thing goes very very fast and it

has a very very tight beam leather is a

great test for seeing how small the uh

basically the engraving can be and how

accurate and I'm going to hold this up

to this overhead camera here uh we did

some fun geeky logos and then of course

the geek toolkit uh is a filled in

letters which is a different than like

this Serenity where it's a line draw but

you can see that this came out very nice

and clear

even on this leather and it came out

nice and dark

now moving over to here my daughter

wanted a Bluey purse so I went out and

got an inexpensive purse now this was

harder right because this is curved so

you're trying to focus on here you're

trying to like basically hit this but

when you put it under the laser here

it's a big curve so I basically had

something under it tried to flatten it

out and I got a pretty good cut out of

it or a pretty good engraving I should

say and then on the other side I did her

name now this was a little bit harder

because you're removing material across

here and let's see so what you see there

is it came out really good the the the a

through the well a through the a

basically came out clean but the J I had

a little bit of problem with that was

where I was still dialing in the the the

depth and I went a bit deeper and then I

had to stop it and back off that being

said if I had a uh if I was gonna make a

bunch of these or if I was doing a

project I would probably make like get a

sacrificial purse or cut on some area

where I could test engrave that wouldn't

be visible this came out great I really

really really excited about this project

my daughter loves this purse so that was

a lot of fun

and now she has a bully purse that's

like an adult purse so that's cool

the final project I want to talk about

is this acrylic clock uh now this right

here this is a good test for acrylic so

we've done leather we've done wood uh

actually I'll talk about Metal after

this as well but for the acrylic the

nice thing is you get a really good test

of how does it perform with uh basically

the heat of it hitting the acrylic now

it's a very difficult thing to dial in I

thought I had it and all of this this

came out exactly as I wanted except for

the N let's see we're going to move this

here the n is a little bit uh basically

heated it basically melted a little bit

on the end so I'll show the back of it

which is where where you can really see

it so that was more of a dialing and

thing as far as like cutting acrylic

this is a fairly intricate piece this is

a clock that's going to go in my bedroom

I have a black and and red uh black

white red bedroom and I wanted something

to match that that theme and this came

out really well now if you want to know

how to build these acrylic clocks how I

put this together I have a video I'll

link to on how to do these but I like to

show like you know not just this stuff

right of how fast it cuts but basically

the projects you can do with these

lasers and this one was has been fun ah

metal so the other thing about these

lasers

is they come with these pens

and they used to always ask why did they

come with a marker well they go in the

marker because that's how you mark metal

now again diode lasers cannot engrave

metal the the word engraved implies that

it's actually cutting or removing metal

material so when I say can't engrave it

means you can't remove the material that

being said you can mark it okay so what

I've done here is I took the marker and

you basically use scribble all over the

metal and I'll just do that real quick

just to show you here

and you don't have to it doesn't have to

be fully black it or anything or it just

has a dark enough to see so it's you

know that's what that looks like there

and then you come across with the laser

and you laser whatever you want into

this

and then when you're done with that you

just the you know there's a little

eraser here you just erase it

and whatever you hit with the laser will

be permanently there so you can see this

was for my cat whiskers which is funny

because it's a dog bone and then when I

try to remove that it's there it's

permanently on there so you can mark

metal with this there's other uh

chemicals and stuff that you can put on

metal to Market as well

[Applause]

okay so the next thing I want to talk

about is some notes of what I learned

about this laser if you have one of

these and you want to use it one of the

things is make sure if you're cutting

you lift your material up on the back of

this here you can see the charring

because what it looks like if the

material is on the uh basically on your

metal plate if you lift it up a bit and

you cut through you'll get a much much

cleaner uh look so on the back here you

can see where it's cleaned here and then

here you can see this one is actually

dark you get this like almost like smoke

that ends up into the wood or something

something that stains it so basically

lifting it off here you can get a nice

clean cut so that's one of the tips this

is pretty with any dialed laser but I

learned this uh really well with this

one here

another thing with 10 watt lasers is a

lot of the laser speeds that you've seen

out there especially this one are uh not

very relevant you're going to want to

come up with your own speeds and that's

where these come in really handy the

other thing is keep in mind that

different Woods you really want to do

this for each wood this one right here

is a Basswood but for the same speeds

and so on for this what uh for let's say

plywood which has glues in it it's gonna

be totally different so you know these

are really popular uh to generate and

I'll talk about that in a video I'll

talk about basically how I Benchmark

fees and how I generate those in a video

here soon

okay so what did I think about this

laser is conclusion well we'll talk

about the good points this laser worked

right out of the box there was no

problems I had no weird issues with this

laser and I actually had a

pre-production unit there was some

assembly quirks about it but I was able

to get through those and I verified with

the manufacturer that those were all

documented properly I basically had the

final documentation but not quite the

final Hardware so even with that I was

able to put this thing together and get

it up and running very very quickly the

uh everything about it worked their

software their Bluetooth thing worked

the first time for me so I basically was

really impressed with just a

reliabilities laser the other thing was

the consistency of going through things

when I was cutting through wood I got

very confident on my settings and I was

very reliably going through things which

was really really nice

the other thing was the power this was

the first time I saw anything cut a half

inch piece of wood now the reason this

is important is there's a lot of lasers

that say they're 10 watts there's just a

ton of them out there I've turned down

like five or six reviews on them they

didn't offer anything different

but the reason it's important to look at

like YouTube reviews these lasers is

things like the focal length matters so

much more than anything else and the way

this thing is focused to have that long

Focus means it can cut through this

thick of wood I didn't have to like

lower it and re-cut or do a bunch of

passes and stuff like it was able to get

through this full thing in the four

passes reliably and that's that's a half

inch piece of wood um that's just

amazing that's that's absolutely amazing

to have that kind of reliability and

that's what inspired me to try the

puzzles and to be able to cut through

the puzzles in one pass without burning

the paper the way this did was really

really nice

now it's not all roses of course there's

going to be some things this laser

doesn't have or things I wish it had and

so on the number one thing is it does

not have an air assist now this is the

jl7 they do have a laser with an air

assist they I will see if I can get a

hold of that one I'm very excited to try

and air assist with a 10 watt laser I

think that's a killer combo it's really

ironic to be able to uh go through such

thick wood but without an air assist

you're going to get this charring so you

look at this piece here see it's all

black right I believe with an air assist

I'll get a better cleaner cut I also

think I can go even faster than I was

going here because it would actually be

blowing the ash away I would have to

re-cut so for these uh things where I

have to go through multiple passes to go

deeper I think an air assist would be

amazing this just doesn't have it and

the thing about these lasers is I don't

know if you can add it without like

cutting through the metal and hacking it

and that's that's not ideal the other

two things about this is it doesn't have

an LCD now there is an LCD Port I'll

have to ask the manufacturer if that's

like an available add-on or something if

they sell it I've seen some of these

that have an LCD port and the LCD wasn't

available so I'll have to check but just

not coming with an LCD if you're uh

really want to do a lot of stuff off an

SD card LCDs are really really nice

the other thing is the again at the time

of filming and I'll edit the description

when they update this the firmware

cannot do gerbil plus uh these the

rotary you cannot do the rotary with the

Gerber firmware you have to use their

proprietary firmware which limits you to

their software uh which in my opinion is

just not going to be as powerful as a

full uh software suite like laser gerbil

or light burn so that you know that to

me is a ding but they if they support

this if they update the firmware if they

get that in there I'll put that in the

comments below and I think that would be

really cool

overall I'm very very impressed with

Wayne locks they've been very responsive

to my emails they've been very

responsive to my support

um this thing again worked out of the

box which I can't say for a relays

forever Feud so that is excellent I'm

really really excited about the puzzle

creation ability I have now so I'll do

that in a future video but for now I

just want to say uh thanks for watching

I hope you learned some stuff got

inspired saw some cool things you can

build with these these uh lasers uh

maybe if you make a clock let me know I

I really enjoy being able to make my own

clocks and there's so many designs and

patterns I'm looking forward to actually

getting into making my own of those and

uh my daughter loves her purse so this

has been a lot of fun projects very

geeky and um until next time I'm Joe

Farrell geek toolkit thank you