Restoring A Chinese Laser Cutter After Fire (Part 1)

new project happy 🙂

I am crazy excited about this new project! A job caught fire in this laser cutter (a Red Sail Laser X700) at my friend’s company. They decided to let it go, but he was able to intervene before all of it ended up in the trash. Now I am trying to make it work again. First step was to transfer it from his garage to my now-even-more-crowded garage.

barely enough space to walk around it

The appearance of the enclosure is a pretty good indication of where the fire was burning. And although the soot is concentrated mostly in this area, there was plenty of grime distributed throughout the inside. So the first step was to take off all the covers and make the gantry more accessible.

lots of cleanup to do
all of the mirrors definitely need to be replaced
cutter head pre-clean up
cutter head post cleanup
shiny and clean (mostly)

Cleaning involved taking the whole gantry off, buffing every part with steel wool, vacuuming up all the steel wool bits, wiping everything with isopropyl alcohol, and finally reassembling. It took a long time, but I couldn’t have imagined how well it would all clean up. As expected, the timing belts were pretty crunchy feeling after being exposed to such heat. But the plastic wheels (nylon I think?) that run along the aluminum extrusions seem perfectly fine.

melted input panel

The photo above shows the inside of the top cover where the button panel and kill switch live. The bottom of the button panel is pretty deformed. There’s a chance its still functional, but the rest of the controller was e-wasted shortly after the fire, so I will just buy a new controller with button panel all together.

close up of burned paint

The burned paint pattern is gross but also weirdly beautiful?

mostly sanded off paint

I used a Scotch-Brite disk to remove most of the burned paint. I really didn’t want to re-paint the whole cover, so I decided to mask off an area on both parts of the cover, and sand/paint only that small area. The masked areas did include some paint that wasn’t actually that damaged, but since it was being painted, I was sure to sand the surface a bit to roughen it up.

ready for primer
freshly painted

I hadn’t noticed before how much darker the door was compared to the rest of the cover. This makes sense because the flames would have been mostly upward and the door has less thermal mass. I’m really please with how the white patch came out – kind of modern looking, way easier than painting the whole thing.

lookin’ pretty

I’m thinking the next steps will be to mount the laser tube and raise the whole frame up so that the other components (water chiller, exhaust fan, air filter) can hopefully live mostly underneath, and not take up even more space.


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13 responses to “Restoring A Chinese Laser Cutter After Fire (Part 1)”

  1. […] bound for the landfill after it caught fire and gave it some TLC to make it operational again. Here’s Part 1 of the […]

  2. […] bound for the landfill after it caught fire and gave it some TLC to make it operational again. Here’s Part 1 of the […]

  3. […] bound for the landfill after it caught fire and gave it some TLC to make it operational again. Here’s Part 1 of the […]

  4. Will Beattie Avatar
    Will Beattie

    As a part-time maintainer of a shady chinese laser cutter with no docs I’m watching this project with interest! Thanks for doing the documentation legwork, and good luck with the project.

  5. willjbeattie Avatar

    As a part-time maintainer of a shady chinese laser-cutter with no docs, I’m watching this series with interest! Thanks for doing the documentation legwork, and good luck with the resurrection.

  6. […] than the original. This is her story, carefully told in detail in a three-part series (part one, part two, part three) that takes us on a journey from trash to triumph. She even recorded video […]

  7. […] than the original. This is her story, carefully told in detail in a three-part series (part one, part two, part three) that takes us on a journey from trash to triumph. She even recorded video […]

  8. […] than the original. This is her story, carefully told in detail in a three-part series (part one, part two, part three) that takes us on a journey from trash to triumph. She even recorded video […]

  9. […] than the original. This is her story, carefully told in detail in a three-part series (part one, part two, part three) that takes us on a journey from trash to triumph. She even recorded video […]

  10. IT-Wizard Avatar
    IT-Wizard

    I am in a pretty same situation; the lasercut machine burned in a local reprap, and i was wondering what work will it takes to rebuild. I am glad to find your blog. But I was attempting to evaluate the cost and what to buy. I feel pretty confident in the work to do.
    There is no Bill Of Material, no references. So I am still whith my question; how much money?

    1. aqian Avatar

      I spent a total of about $2000. Here is a spreadsheet chronicling most of the cost. I didn’t keep track of the spray paint and the steel tubing for the yellow frame, but I think I covered most of it.

      1. IT-Wizard Avatar
        IT-Wizard

        Many thanks: quick and precisely what I wanted. ;o) Keep on!

  11. […] aside: My good friend Joshua who helped me so much with my laser cutter restoration is currently a grad student working with Prof. Nadya Peek, whose Phd work included MtM […]

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