So I'm going to try not to swear. OK, what's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the laser source podcast. Very, very, very super special guest today. Jim Edgeworth, what's up? How's it going, bro? OK, first, really, just before we do anything else, I'm going to get to the co-host. Thank you, Kyle. Um, dude, is your last name really Edgeworth? It is. It is a boss name to get, you know what I mean? That's like a that's like a last name. You can be like classy, but it could also be edgy. Yeah, yeah, I know, for real. Also joining me today, Matt Badaford, what's up, Matt? Doing all right. We've got Kyle, Mr. Kyle. How's it going, man? What's up? And it's always voice looking like you got a fresh wet shave up there, man. Is that is that like real? That's like solid. Yeah, it's clean. I think you would be the the like. The mustache looks trim too. You're like the anti edge of tech over here. I'll say I'm on the opposite of jet like the complete polar opposite. He is falling off the edge of tech into the abyss of tech. The edge of hairdos. So all these people in chat. What's up? Edgeworth is very edgy. Yes, absolutely. We're super excited to have you here, man.  Right? Yeah, we're we're live over here. So hey, everybody. A little bit a little bit different content and I love it. I think we we have we're starting to get some people in there. I think Blastel and Kenneth are jumping in. And nice. I'm just super pumped to be here. I know you guys have been asking for a minute. Alex is like, remember that time we talked about this podcast. And it was like six months ago. Don't I totally get it. I home life here is crazy to the acrobatics that my wife has to do in order to get to this slot every week is just like outrageous. So shout out, Miranda. Shout out. Yeah. And you just you just had a new baby, right? We're like weeks away. Do weeks away. And you're like, yeah, like real close, which is almost worse. Almost worse. But yeah, we're we're here. We finally got together. I'm stoked about it. And if you're here from Jim's crowd, from Jim's neck of the woods, these guys are probably used to like hot makes, which is like very, very structured.  It's on its own channel now. It's a really cool show about just everything maker. A lot of just amazing interviews. It's stellar. There's a link down in the description. But if you're here from Jim's neck of the woods and this is your first time joining us over here at laser everything, we are not organized at all. We just kind of we like to shoot from the hip. Yeah, we shoot from the hip pretty much weekly here. So chaos, chaos everywhere. Welcome to chaos. If you like that, Jim, I don't even know where to start with you, dude. I love it. You started Ed of Tech was like a 3D printing channel. It was. That's like how it kind of sprouted. Why that? But like, what got you into that? And oh, man, so so so the story goes. It all starts when I was six years old. No, I'm just joking. Basically, a good friend, a good friend and coworker, mine, Steve, I'm not sure if he's watching right now or not, but it's your fault, Steve, like years ago. He's like, dude, I got this thing. It's called a 3D printer. It was like $1,200 and it prints stuff and plastic. And I'm like, it does. What? And then, like, you know, years went by and he's like, dude, I got this new thing. It's called an ender three. It blows my $1,200 printer out of the water, like from the beginning, check this out. And then from then it was like an obsession. And that was we were on our way to a perfect circle concert. Have you ever heard of a perfect circle? Of course. Yeah, Maynard. So yeah, Maynard and tool. And so we were on our way out. My wife and my wife and Steve and I and the whole way there and back, we pretty much watched 3D printing review videos to see what I should get. And he got the ender three and then I ordered one on Black Friday and he had the ender three for a couple of months and he just loved it. And that's when it started. And then, you know, I had no idea what the heck I was doing. I ordered a bajillion upgrades like you do. Never printed with a thing. I don't even have it yet, but I have $300 in upgrades on the way. Right. Is that where edge of tech started? Like you were like, you're kind of it started because I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know what an extruder was or a hot end was. And Steve was around and he could help me print. Like he showed me how to slice something and print it and that kind of thing. But like I was looking and I found a guy named Luke Hadfield and he wrote this huge guide for 3D printing and based on like the ender three series printers and I reached out to him when I said, hey, man, I suck it. I don't understand what your words are. Like I don't know what you're trying to tell us to do because I don't know what those things are. Can I start poorly filming them like filming them? I mean, and putting them up for videos, you know, so people can learn with me because I need to learn how to calibrate my E steps or fix the ex gantry. Right. And I said, I'll film step by step on your guide. I'll send you the video.  I'll fix it and then I'll post it. And that's how I started my whole channel. And you know, I just remembered the other day. I never changed my intro video. So it's like the very first video I ever did is my intro video on my channel right now. That's the piece of you. You took from the past and brought with you into the future though. It is. And then, you know, from there it turned into like my whole goal in the very beginning was to learn and 3D print. Yeah. And then I was like, dude, I want to get a free 3D printer. That was my goal. Like I didn't care about anything else. Like I need to is what my problem was. And then Creality reached out to me through Luke and said, um, hey, you know, uh, would you like to do a, like how to build video basically on the under three and they, they sent me the printer. And like after a month, I had a free printer and I was like, now what do I do? This is all like, you know, this is what I wanted to, this is my goal. Yeah.  And then, as you know, many, uh, dollars in studio stuff later and shops later and all that stuff, uh, we're here. We're having a lot of fun. And I probably feel more than I actually print for fun now.  Like, if you master, man, no, no, I don't think. Are you sure?  I feel like that's, that's, that takes some skill, dude. You got to give yourself some credit. I tell you, um, I think I'm far from master because there's so much to learn and it's always changing, right? Um, it just like, just like lasers, you know, I jumped into that later, later in the world when, when like the or tour laser master two came out or whatever they said, do you want to try this? And I was like, yeah, I don't have one. Let's try it. Instantly addicted, right? Like the first time I burnt something, it was just like the first time you print something, right?  And you're like, this is, I did this, you know what I mean? And it's like, whoa, right?   So it was like, it was like, you went from 3D to duty and it's much easier going that direction. I have zero 3D printing experience and I have very little motivation to start because that's an uphill slip. You know, that I feel like there's when you add that third dimension, there's so much more that you have to, but it's getting, it's getting so much, um, lasers, 3D printers, all of that stuff, right? It's not like a toaster. You don't just throw it on your counter at home and you say, make me something. You, there's work that goes into it, right? But it's getting closer with all those machines. It's getting so much closer, right? Um, 3D printing this past year took a huge leap forward with the, the bamboo lab, um, someone says bamboo K1 max. Nice. Um, anyways, with the bamboo lab printers, um, you know, I think it is the closest thing out of the box to out of the box printing that I've ever seen and it's so fast. Yeah.  I did, um, a six to four reducer for, for the new ventilation I got for the fiber laser, right? I'm sure we'll talk about that. And, um, it printed in three hours and 20 minutes, all size, six to four, six inch to four inch reducer. Yeah.  The prices are really coming down. It's just that continuous democratization of technology and things get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. I tell my audience all the time, I'm like, we play with stuff that used to only be purchasable by like giant manufacturing plants for like 10s or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And now we just like have one in our garage or, you know, smaller and I want to be able to take it like, yeah, we're like, it doesn't work good. Yeah. You know, it's like, dude, like this is amazing. I don't think I have it here, but Matt, I have, what the heck was this thing? I got, um, oh man, I think it's a Sane Smart, um, little diode with, uh, with the mirrors in it. And it's like this big. You can literally pick it up and carry it around. It's like a three by three burn area, but you could, they like say you can put it up against things and stuff. Like that's pretty dope. And people will still complain about it, but by the way, he's right. Like the, I know the bamboo thing. I was just going to say that I've got the, uh, it's really cool how much, how far it's come. Like I got the Delta FL sun super racer, like the Delta thing. And it's amazing, dude. Like I have zero, I'm like with Alex, zero scale with printing. And Kyle basically sat there with me when I was getting out of the box and maybe like an hour later, I had like my first 3d printed like chest piece and I was like, what? It's wild. You have the super racer or the V 400? Super racer. Ooh, I have one. Uh, if anyone wants it, uh, let me know. Um, I, uh, the V 400 is the fast one, the one that came out after the super racer and, um, I thought they were sending me that, right? And I was like, yeah, send it over. I can't wait to check this thing out. I love Delta printers. Um, got it. And it was a super racer. Checked my email and they said, they sent me an email at some point and said, actually, um, we were out of stock. Can you do this video first? And then we'll send you this, the 400. I'm like, I didn't read it.  And, and I was like, this thing is, I saw Joel stream. I saw some other ones. I'm like, um, this isn't, this isn't getting the light of day. Probably not because it's not an okay printer. It's just because I've seen a lot of issues. Um, they can be mitigated very quickly. I just didn't want to do a whole video and then have people telling me how bad I was wrong. Right. We run into that over here from time to time. Actually, right? It is what it is. Yeah, it is. Um, when you, when you like slipped on the banana peel and fell into the laser pile, it was because of diodes. You got him with diodes. Man, it was. Um, and that's, that's that itself is a slippery slope, especially once, dude, the diode manufacturers, once one of them gets a hold of you, a hold of you.  So many diode options out there. That's the thing at the time they had the or two or laser master, which was the one with the, like the arm.  And that, that's the one I started on because I turned down the other one, like this is a little, I don't necessarily want to play with that. It's open diode, you know, there's a stigma behind that. And then finally, I was like, I'm doing this. I don't care. Let's check it out. And you're, you're just stuck.  I found a Chinese blue and white 50 watt, um, a person had passed away and their wife had was having a friend to their cell, like the guy's stuff, right? Um, I was like, I'll come look at it, 800 bucks. It says extra laser tube. I came with everything I get there. The extra laser tube is broken. Like he didn't take care of his broken in the packaging, which sucked because I was looking forward to that. I think I ended up giving him 700 bucks or 650 right around there. Yeah. And, but it was, that's the cost of a chiller, bro. I mean, dude, that's what I'm saying. It was, it was like my, my way into CO2, right? Everything on that machine was broken. That was probably still a decent deal. That's a, that's a gateway laser for surely. Yeah. When you guys know Russ, um, is it Stadler? Stradler, Stadler, Stadler. Um, to bark. Yep. Can't say his last name, but he does the doohickey, right? He has that thing called a doohickey. It measures the, well, anyways, that came with it. I had no idea what this thing was. I'm searching like probe and I find something that called a doohickey. I reach out to him. He's the nicest guy I've ever talked to. Like, he's like, yeah, just I'll help you. Anything you want.  But, uh, no, it was cool. It came with everything. And then I dove into CO2 and realized how much faster it was than diode. Um, yeah. And like cutting, you know, and don't at me. I know the diodes can cut, uh, but cutting. Come on, buddy. In this year. Yeah. Technically. Um, and then, and then what, what, what did you hit your head on when you discovered Galvalasers? Cause I know you've got a tiny one. So that was a lot of fault of you guys. Um, no, I watched your show, your channel for a while and, um, others. And I started seeing coins and, you know, you, all of a sudden you watch something and it starts going through me.  And, uh, I started seeing coins. I started seeing how cool it was. And I'm like, this is pretty sweet. I might need to check this out. And, uh, you know, that kind of how that's how it started now. And then, you know, uh, I think worked with omtech and took a minute.  It's pretty. I've seen those pictures. It's in the thumbnail. If you guys haven't seen it, I love that. It's, uh, I have some pictures too. If you want to see them, but, um, it's, it's a sweet, it's red. I'm a blue guy, but I love the red. I don't know what it is. It's, it's a looking machine. Yeah. And then I realized, uh, if you, if anyone out there watched my, my video, uh, two weeks ago, cause I didn't do a video last week, um, for those of you who don't know, Kayla, the guy who edits my videos and good time or longtime friends since like 2019, when I met him at a 3d printing function, actually, um, he lost his house in a tornado. Oh my God.  Um, so we did, uh, we didn't do a video last week because we didn't have a place to live, let alone a computer to edit on. Yeah. And, uh, and, um, we did a big fundraiser for him. Community came out amazing. But, um, you know, it's, I did that video two weeks ago and I realized while I was doing that video, I got this thing open, I can open light burn, um, shout out to, uh, Joe over at light burn for, uh, helping me out with some stuff on that side. They're great over there. But, um, I realized like, what the heck am I doing? So, and that, that'll lead me into the, probably a good portion of this, this, this show with questions.  How the heck do I know what frequency to use between a calling like this or a plastic case like this? Like, I mean, laser and printing is a lot of testing, right? But it's gotta be like a guy testing, but there's rules. Yeah. So if you're watching this and you're not Jim, uh, go check out the laser, everything it's called the, uh, light burn for Galvo crash course. Okay. And the very first video in there is called everything you need to know about Galvo lasers. That is your ticket. Go watch it. I say that every time we start answering questions. So I'm just putting that out there now. Frequency is weird, right? Because everything that we've ever used before is just it's speed power, right? Yep. Frequency. We have frequency because the Galvo laser is a post laser.  It's turning on and off really, really fast. The frequency is how fast those pulses are occurring. And the faster you go, the smaller they get because you have to fit more of them together. So the impact is much harder at lower frequencies than it is at higher frequencies. So when trying to carve out the inside of a coin, it would make sense to use a lower frequency because you're getting those nice big punches.  And we're just trying to barely kind of affect the surface there. Uh, and of course that's a hyper simplification, but, uh, that's kind of the general rule. Uh, and it, it, it makes a huge difference as I'm sure you've noticed. Yeah. Well, shout out to, um, you guys have the laser master academy, right? Yeah, definitely, definitely a member. And, uh, thank you. You guys have like the libraries on there. Um, and that helps a lot. And I am, I am, I should know this, but I've never had to deal with this before because I'd never cared. But can I have a co2 library living with a fiber library at the same time? Or do I have to flip them? Uh, um, in light, like in light burn? Yeah. Yeah. If you have two libraries loaded, we just answered this last week on the podcast and we haven't published that with the edit. Okay. I was going to say, but, um, yeah, man, I, yeah, I did a little demo and everything. So basically once you open a machine in light burn, like a co2 laser, and you have your library there with your co2 settings, if you go in and like force it to save, you do a save as you name that the name of the machine.  Okay. Same thing, bring load in your fiber laser library, do a force save as save that to the same folder with the name of the machine. Then when you swap back and forth between machines, like for the swap back and forth between the libraries, that's what I was missing. I wasn't doing the save part because I was like, because I have two windows open, it was great till I close them. Right. Yeah. Yeah. By default, it'll, what it'll do is it'll go back and it'll just default to the last machine that had a saved library, essentially. Another pro tip for years to the layers at the bottom to what about because like, say I'm doing fiber work, um, for instance, I made this coin. Then today I jumped on the co2 and the same layers were set on the, you know, I chose my co2 loaded up like I normally do through the artwork in, but those, those three layers I was using were set for the fiber parameters that that's one thing that won't change. So you still have to apply the, the library parameters. Yeah, use the libraries.  You can literally run your co2 and your fiber at the same time. I don't even hear that. What I've been doing. Yeah, that's a good one because, because I like to run them both at the same time, you know, when I maximize that time, I, um, shout out to Jay Mac, like super cool dude worked with me for like an hour explaining some stuff about coins, walked me through a whole coin cause I was itching to try one and a shout out to, to him. Um, I got, uh, I got pictures that are way better than this, but let's see if we can focus. Yeah, look at that. Um, shout out if you know what this is from, by the way. Uh, or I mean extra bonus points, but so there's that and it's got some, some really good depth and then I was able to do, let's see how that probably like this, I don't know that in the back. Let's see. Oh, wicked. I actually saw your post this morning too. I was like waking up and having coffee and you were like, oh, the, the cleanup pass. I forgot the cleanup pass with the lines, you know what, I was just going to bring that up right now. I was so excited to get this off the machine last night. Right. I went in and it's instinctive to reach in and grab it. Yep. And before the opposite side, I saw the lines and I was like, I know what I did. I forgot the cleanup pass at the very end. Um, and what I did, what, well, actually what I did was the cleanup pass on the first side was set to like point two line or something. Like it was something crazy because I was doing your, your testing and you guys use those big chunky lines. I forgot to change it. So then in my cleanup pass, it was like just line, line, you know, so I fixed that to what Jay Mac told me to use. Right. Yep. I got back, forgot to run it on this side and then I pulled that coin off and I'm like, God bless it. I, that rookie mistake. It was a rookie mistake, but we've all done it, man. Yeah.  You're not lining that back up. Yeah. And unless you want to clean the whole top of the coin off, you could do that, but then there you go. Same thing here. Yeah. Yeah. It's a hell. Yep. Yeah. And you just get excited and, and for me, I'm like, this is a, if you guessed it, I don't know if anyone did. It was a supernatural, the show supernatural. This was just some symbols. One was like to stop you from being possessed. And this one was like the devil's trap or something. Yeah, dude. And demon trap, right? Yeah. And it's human trap. It is. I think this particular one, I think this one, this particular one was the devil's trap, but I want to do the demons trap too. Um, I thought it was a God's smack at first. By the way, that's pretty close to speaking of awful things here. Thank you for throwing that up. Yeah. So sparkling ice budget, Alex, the only reason that I don't have the sparkling ice right now, and I'm drinking this disgusting sugared beverage is because my Amazon subscribe and save is not set to a high enough frequency, which I'm just now learning because it's my first month on that. So I'm going to double my dosage of sparkling ice next month. And then hopefully I won't be doing this again. Sorry. Shout out to Coach Hill. Thank you. First world problems for that. What I got. I got the bubbly today. It's a bubbly, the bubbly. Chris loves the bubbly. My brother loves bubbly, dude. He's not about it. Well, I love that. And I have like a giant water here too. So there's, you know, there's that water is the way to go really. I mean, the ginger tea and the Pepsi. You mentioned demon traps. I thought of sparkling ice and I remembered. Oh, yeah, there it is. It's Alex's demon trap. You get his soul. How how much time do you think that you've put into the omtech? Oh, man, not not enough, not nearly enough. It's I think the challenge is content because we're, you know, creating content, trying to keep the the YouTube machine fed. Yeah. But I probably say besides burn time, I'm not going to count that because, you know, that's just it doing its thing, right? But like just learning. I probably have a however long the first like three quarters of your playlist is and videos and then and then and then maybe a couple hours. It's not not enough to be a hundred percent honest. I mean, I have a lot of like two hours with Jay Mac or hour and a half with Jay Mac. I talked to Kyle for a bit the other day, too, and talk to you. And I think that's part of the challenge, just like with any machines. Um, I don't have enough time to work on a single one for a long time, but I'm going to put the time in for that because it is such a cool machine. Have you have you looked inside yet? I haven't. No, you haven't. Okay. That's what I really want an update on that when you do it. I want to hear about what you think about like its assembly and like the wiring and things like that. There's a lot. So what should I look for? Because to me, Kyle, yeah, I could look into it and be like, I saw what the M seven, um, you know, the, what is it, the JTP M seven, you know, the controller looks like and stuff. But other than that, like I'm looking at it and be like, cool, you know, I can rebuild a computer. That's what I do normally during the day, right? I work on computers. I can do that in five seconds and name all the parts.  Yeah, so it's we kind of go by a lot of the what I would expect would be probably the same rules that you would see in 3D printing. Right. So you don't want to see like, like not necessarily right and wrong, but like, you know how tinned wires are kind of frowned upon in the 3D printing world because of the vibrations, if it loosens up, so you don't want to fire. Well, it's kind of the same with 3D printing. You, you still have moving parts. It still creates vibrations and you don't necessarily want that to become a fire hazard. So that is something that I look for it in in my reviews, at least. And it's probably so I have a unit from Com Marker. Admittedly, it's it's a pre-production unit that I knew it was coming this way. But it came that way because they were in a rush to get it to me. So I could check it out. But I'm going to be doing a little guide on, you know, just snipping the ends of the wires and putting on, you know, nice for for connectors. And yeah, are you going to use steriles or works? OK, yeah, Ryan Vines is probably not watching. But he's the 3D printing world. He's a feral guy like he checks every single machine like just to make sure it's done right. You know, yeah, that's that's good to know. I'll have to pop it open and snap some pictures or something. Yeah, I was very ready for that the other day. We were talking about it and he was like, nothing leaves without this. The other thing that the other thing that you really don't want to see is the fiber optic cable that actually carries the laser from the source inside of the box up to the like a midder and the Galvo scan head inside the actual like laser source box, not the laser source box, but the container that it's in, you know, the big box. People will either wrap the excess wire up into like really tight coils and zip time together or they'll run them around the outside of the box or they'll tie them in knots. You don't want anything except for the slightest of curves. OK, right? Really tight coils and and like tucked things and pieces like that are really bad because it's a fiber optic cable, right? It's glass, a literal glass. And we've seen a lot of machines from different brands come back where it's literally right next to the laser source is like a little opening. And then immediately, the fiber optic cable goes like 90 degrees and the beam actually just blows out the side of the cable. Really? Into the case. Yeah, because it can't. The light wavelength won't bend like that, you know? And so it just starts exiting the fiber optic cable like out the side. Super dangerous. So things like that, you know, things that look fishy, man. But I don't have to wear my glasses. I don't have to wear my glasses when I think, right? I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen like like if you've ever seen the hoses with like the the light source in them. So when the water shoots out of the hose, the light source follows the curve of the water once around. But if you if you break the stream with your finger, the light will bend out of the water. It kind of does the same thing with a fiber optic cable and light. So if there if you form a break in that glass line, it'll start to protrude out of that break. And it. Yeah. Problem. So the writers asking which Omtech models you guys are talking about, trying to search and follow along. Do you know which model you got off? So yeah, yes. It's the 30 watt Mopa. So if you go to Omtech's website and go to Fiber lasers, they have an M series or Mopa series. And it's the 30 watt. I'm not sure exactly what the actual model is called. But but that's that's the one. And actually, I have. Let's see here. Can just show you this. So this is shared real quick. That's that's a picture of while I was unboxing it. But yeah, that red, though. Yeah, something about that red screen. The newer finish that they have on those is pretty cool. It is. Yeah. So so I'm going to take this off now. I'm going to look inside of there because yeah. That's where they got the wire loom on it here. Right. But where it comes in, it shouldn't be wrapping around a bunch of times. It should just be. I mean, it can it can wrap around as many times as it wants to. Just not tight. Yeah. We just don't want they coil it up. I don't know why they coil it up. You think they would know better wraps, big turns are OK. Sure. Tight turns or not. That's kind of the kind of the rule of thumb there. But yeah, dude, it looks great. I can't wait to hear a little bit more about it too.  And I can't blame you for it. By the way, is what is let me try to see if I can find this piece. While you're finding it, I'm going to remind people if you're having fun with us and Jim, don't forget to smash the like button because we're at the halfway mark with 73 people on our stream and only 31 likes. So definitely let people know what's going on. There you go. Mash it. Come on. Hit that. Smash, mash. Also, here's a fun little comment. So what you're saying is I need to get a CO2 laser so I can run them both at the same time. That's clearly what I heard. Really? Yeah, clearly. Yeah. Consumer firing design won a bamboo lab printer recently from from HotMakes. And I made a comment earlier that they did not have great luck with 3D printing.  So I've heard definitely is a thing, you know, it's it's all about when you're starting this, if you're starting lasers or 3D printing, filing your nails, it doesn't matter what it is. If you have something to help you make it easier, like your channel's videos, right? Yeah. That helps you get into the world of it, right? And then if you have that machine that just I can put a parameter in and see the result and it's not like a bajillion extra steps. It's something about simplicity when you're first getting into something that says a lot. And that's, you know, the bamboo lab printer is exactly what that is, because you throw it in the slicer, it's all presets. If you want to use those, which I most of the time do, I select a preset. I say slice, I choose one of the six of them. I want to send it to me and I shoot it to them. Yeah, period. Like that's it. You know what I mean? And and I don't care about all the other stuff. And there's so many options you can do. And you can and I use some of them. But the thing is you just want that thing, whether it's the laser key chain you just created, whether it's a coin for the first time, the Leatherette we were talking about before the show. Like you just want that to come off and you want to see it in your hands done. Yeah, there you go. There you go. I was about to go to who clicked this. I did told to old to be gaming says I bought a P1P for my 82 year old mother. She prints nonstop with it. You're making a real case for me to to really want an X1 carbon or a P1P or something. It really depends on what you're going to do. Yeah, the rumor is they're making a big one and I don't know anything about that yet, but there's rumors. There's always rumors, right? I've been looking into getting set up with a bigger one for doing a jig guide at some point. Ooh, that'd be cool. Did you I see you still have a share up, Jim? Did you find you were looking for it? So there's this piece that came with it. OK, I have no idea where to put it. OK, there's nothing in the instructions. Yeah, and I don't know. So it's it's this little piece right here. So easy to handle with the spring and it screws down and on your tower. Right. You know, you have the wheel to turn it up and turn it down. So where that intersects with the laser path that cross beam that holds the elbow head, wherever that is on the other side of the tower, there's a little hole. And if you screw the handle into the hole, you can lock the galvan head into position. OK, so that makes sense. So there's three, there's three holes because the side of this one actually has a monitor mount that you can put on it. So there's three holes and that makes sense why there would be three, right? Right. But I don't know if it's the bottom two, the top two I use for the monitor mount. And you know, is it usually towards the top then? The which one? The the actually screw down the tightening piece. Well, I don't have the monitor, the machine that I have with it. It goes in almost at the top, almost at the top. Yeah, almost. Yeah, it's in like the top quarter. I don't I don't use it. Yeah, it's really good if you're jigging things and you're doing a like a bulk production of one item long run. Yeah. And you don't have to move, right? Is that what's going on?  So so I have one more question. OK, let me see. Hang on. Let me let me pause this. I'm assuming you all tried this. I saw a video. I had to try this. Is this like a rite of passage? Is this the thing? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's pretty cool. One of the first things we ever did with our fiber laser was actually drill holes into pennies and then we let kids engrave their names on them at our at the maker, the Rochester maker fair. And then a blast with it. But yeah, dude, you got to go through. You got to clean up some coins. You got to de rust something. Yeah, I found an axe that I've used for so many years out in the backyard, like, you know, just hacking up stuff. And I was just like a while I first started, I was like, wait, so I can take this off now and like just layers of rust coming off. And I was just like, oh, it's amazing. We're going to see you. I have questions about other things that you do before we get to that. I kind of breezed over CO2. Yeah, you have a CO2 coming, too. I have a ride. So I've had a few now. I started with that blue and white 50 watt. That's a Chinese 50 watt that I got. Great. I got me into it and I love that thing. It was super deep, too. Like that was cool. Like it wasn't it wasn't powered. So you were like, you know, yeah, you know, it took it took you 30 minutes to not just it took a minute to go all the way down or something. But then I had one of those like make block laser box pros. Right. It was OK.  So don't buy that laser. And then we covered that. I actually sold that to a guy because I bought that. I bought that full. I said it in the video. I paid shipping and tax on that laser. I sold it to a guy for exactly what I paid for because those were expensive lasers.  And he uses that as school. Yeah, cool. And then I got a what the week cloud laser. A week cloud pro or whatever. Yeah, yeah, right. Basically the same thing, but you can use light burn. Not a bad machine. But not exactly what I was looking for. Compared to all these are all you're doing your list so far. Besides your original laser is like they're all hypercompact. Like duper simplified send down. Yeah. And so then I was watching your stream one day and like a marathon stream, like four and a half hours or something. You guys a box to the light object Ranger three. And I was like, that looks awesome. And then I reached out to you and asked you how you liked it. And you said you did. And I literally emailed Marco, Marco, I guess that is email. Yeah, I totally guess. And I was like, hey, man, this is who I am. I love this. I saw it on our channel. And, and, you know, now I have one sitting in my in my garage. Nice. I didn't even know it arrived. It's here. It's here. And it is freaking awesome. Cool, dude. So from your videos, not going to lie, I didn't know it had feet. I've never seen before. I took the feet off. That's why I didn't know. Yeah, because you said it sat on the table. You have it on the folding table, right? I think you said yours was on before. I'm not sure if it still is. It is not. That was a no, no, but I put it ended up on like one of those wood top work pro work fetches. Yeah. And it has like those thin like leg strips before the actual feet, you know, and mine just sits on that on the table and that does fine. I put some weather stripping on it. It's like kind of grippy, you know, does the trick, dude. Does the trick. I didn't like the feet. Well, I measured and I was like, this is going to fit. I have one of those like big, huge, industrial shelving things. Yeah. And that's where I was keeping my CO2s, you know, so I had a shelf above it, a shelf under it.  Well, no, they're all level, but store stuff above them.  This is amazing. You know, and I was one of the coolest things. Now, that video is not up yet because that's one of the next ones that didn't get edited yet because of tornado. But I love it, man. I'm digging the Trosin controller, dude. Yeah. First time using one. Sexy. Yeah. And and there's so many cool things, but I have to ask you. Yep. How many times have you left something on the freaking bed at auto homes when you turn it on when I crash it? Yeah, you crunched it all. Damn it. All the time. And I have I have Ruitas that do that, like the Eon does that. And I does it. I crunch on that too. All the time. I still have not so many lasers later. Just never figured out the habit of throwing stuff on my my CO2 bed. When I'm like moving things around the shop because there's like a 50 square foot shop. So it's tiny. So I have a habit of throwing stuff on there. And one of the first times I did that was with a laptop. Smash right into the laptop. Well, and this is my first motorized Z.  But the whole the whole bed doesn't move. And in this case, I totally didn't even think about it. The first time I had a coaster under it, which isn't at the end of the world. But I was just like, what is this? Oh, my God, you know, I'm thinking now through your list of CO2, is this your first one with a beam combiner? Were you getting the red not red dot through the nozzle? Yeah, the the helpful one I had the first one I bought, which my buddy Trent has now, I gave it to him. I'm making space. I gave away. I got rid of the other two lasers I had just because this one was coming and it was going to the place of both, right? But it had the one that mounts on the actual laser head and shoots down. And it had like the and the red dot. And I kind of dialed it in a little bit. Yeah, I barely used it. But this is the yeah, the first one I've had with the beam combiner. Yeah, it is sick. I it's it's sick. I was just going to see. Let's see. I think I can't wait to watch your video about it now. I'm super stoked.   Have you seen the inside panels? Yeah, like how well everything's where I keep harping on that to my audience is just like how much I love like the relays. And then it's like power supplies. And then like and they're all they're all right there. You can just touch them. You know, nothing's buried under the bed or like hard to get to. I I'm just so stoked on them. It's it's gorgeous. And by the way, if you want to turn it on, it's down here. I'm just going to throw that out there. Yeah, but but yeah, I mean, the thing looks it looks really nice. It performs. I haven't had a lot of time on it. And I've had it for like a little over a week. So it just just got it not had a lot of time on it. But, you know, they they sent me that they sent me the the 600 this. What is it? You 600 cooler, which is plenty, plenty for this thing. And it is been cold here in Wisconsin. So it's probably never even cooled anything. Actually, when I turn it on, it yells at me because there's a low temp error. And I usually keep my my shop at 50. Currently, when I'm going to be in there, I raise it to 60. When I'm in there, my God, you guys are insane with your cold temperatures. What happens when you live up in the North, man? You just ride an alligator to work. It's fine. So it is awesome.   You can open everything you can get to everything, which is huge. It's huge.  To be incorrect, asking a question about cost on that. Anybody remember the units? It's like, yeah, it's like 4,300 and change or something. Yes, I'm still right now. It depends on what accessories you get with it. If you get the upgraded tube, a lot of things for your buck. And it's out of stock. It is out of stock currently that I saw last and also get the chiller if you can, because you're going to need one anyway. Yeah, a bucket is what I was using for for the other the blue and white, right? But then I saw, I think it was Louisiana Hobby Guy, if I remember, right? I'm pretty sure it was him. He did like this mod where he used like a little desktop ice machine and he ran a pump into it. And then the whole like I lasered the holes for the hose and everything right in there. So much work filled it with distilled water and you turn it on and it produces ice every six minutes. Freakin genius. If you're in a pinch and you don't have a chiller. Yeah, it worked. A matter of fact, I had to be careful because it got so cold. It was like in the 60s or 50s when it because I had a temp, you know, thermometer in there. Yeah. And this is probably a little too cold at some point. But when you ran it for like an hour, you might get 80, 85, you know. And yeah, I'm like, I'm good with that. I'm OK with that. But so if you're in a pinch, check that out because it was a genius idea. Desktop ice maker. So here's a here's a question. Oh, God, the Q six. I just want to extra shout out for those children.  I don't know if you saw it, but I just uploaded a video on my channel where we poured boiling hot water on and it like cut the temperature in half in one pass after being on for like 60 seconds. I mean, it's like crazy. So they're just really good. But yeah, question and this this thing. This this I believe is what I got with for the focus. Yeah, yeah, I was asking you. I think I said, like, what's your focus? Because I called them even like I called them on the phone. By the way, you can call them on the phone if you have issues. By the way, they told me to use this as the focal stick. And then also you can take your lens out with it. They told me that's true. Yeah. But I mean, I'm very close to this. When I did a couple of ramp tests, like I did four ramp tests in a row, like I'm just going to figure this out. And it's very it's this is probably what I would have chosen. But it's not six millimeters like like the manual says and like you use. So my question is, should I try six millimeters to see what happens? I mean, it's definitely this is too big. I mean, that's too big.  I don't think it's going to hurt anything. I would cut your own focal stick in the meantime. I did. Yeah. So I I actually I've been using this and I was I wanted to have and you were going to be here today. So I was like, I'm going to talk to you first. But I usually have been cutting them out of acrylic and just that's what I do. But yeah, yeah, I do. I do the same thing. I don't even know where most of my manufacturer focal sticks are anymore. I like dial mine in and cut my own right out of acrylic. And that's usually how I do it. That said, you could try it, but my I got a completely different setup from you. So like mine came and of course, we're having our show with you right after I just moved all my lasers back out of the home office back to the shop. The movies were literally here yesterday. We moved all the lasers back to the shop because we're moving to a new house and it's like a whole thing. Um, but mine came with a little metal disc. And when you turn it like flat ways and stick that under the nozzle, it's perfect and it's on point. It's like where it needs to be. Yeah, I didn't make any adjustments to that focal distance at all. And it was it was like five point nine three. Sure, like it was like six millimeters.   And there's a little like pressure like cap down there. And use that to go through that in order to get the lens out. So definitely that's good to know. I wonder if I missed the disc somewhere. I'll double check everything. Yeah, double check for the disc. Do I remember in the unboxing video, you were talking about watching the live one, the super long one. I hold it up to the camera and I'm like, what the heck is this? Well, I think you use something else initially and you're like, this isn't in focus. Yeah, totally, totally. And dude, I haven't gotten to play with the Ranger enough either. But yeah, we have like 10 minutes left, dude. I want to only count refocus. Yeah, I know. Time's flying. Talk to me about hot makes a little bit like what what do you guys do over there? I was on once. I was confused because, you know, I'm me. I'm OK. I brought chaos that if you want to feel that's good. You're going to pop makes go watch my episode because I bring chaos. This chaos to hot makes what would you guys do over there? What's what's the deal? You know, we we man, this started a long time ago. It's an old lot of episodes. Yeah, well, I started by myself and then we brought in Pooch and I got together and we started this hot makes and it was basically the same show called something different. We rebranded and we've done like 143 episodes now. I think every Monday, pretty much. And we haven't hit all of them. There's holidays and stuff like that. But basically we do this and then we talk about stuff that the community has done. For instance, you guys always have people showing off like stuff they burn and with the laser stuff like that.   And it's just it's a way for us to hang out. I don't have time to look at social media to see what everybody's doing. So it's a way for me to see some cool stuff because I don't have time for that with the little guy with work, with the channel, you know, with trying to actually play with the stuff I have to. You know, I don't have time, right? And it's just a way for us to to kind of give back to because people love seeing their stuff on shows like this. But just like we had somebody asking about a question I saw in the chat, you know, we're definitely not ignoring you. And I think we feel the same way, right? It's they love their questions being answered. They love their stuff being shown. And I do too, like my little coin. I was super excited to post that and it's just a coin. But, you know, but basically that's what we do. We bring guests in. We have fun every Monday night. It's 6 p.m. central and you can find it by typing hot makes all one word into pretty much. And it's it's it's not just like 3D printing. You guys literally like the entire maker space is all we try to. So yeah, I've seen a lot of because of the channel. A lot of 3D printing stuff happens because, you know, that's what the mostly the channel is based on, right? Sure. But we try everything. Metalworking, woodworking, we've had all sorts of stuff on there. And yeah, it's pretty much fair game. You see anything cool at all? Just tag it because we're going to look and it's just it's just a fun show. It's it's, you know, it's work to produce it. And Caleb does an amazing job in the background helping with that. He's actually jumped in as like a co-host now, too. And it's it's so much fun, though, just to talk about what the community does. Show off some community prints and, you know, and just talk for an hour on a Monday, you know, to production value is very high. And I'm super impressed. I'm super impressed by like what you guys love stuff. I I do like I I throw all my BS in after. So we like we go live. I literally just start the stream and I'm like, what's up, guys? And that's it. And then I take it down and I edit it and re upload it.  Everything's done live. I mean, it's like fully produced. It's it's really, really, really cool. And StreamYard makes it super easy to do that. So as long as you I mean, you guys see it on your side, we just throw it all in StreamYard and Caleb knows when to hit the buttons. And I let him do that now. Like we started out and I was doing all that stuff, too. And and we needed somebody eventually because I started to realize I wasn't paying attention to pooch like I should because I was so focused on comments and hitting the buttons and stuff like that. You'd be like, yeah, this thing, you know, I burnt my house down and I'd be like, cool, man, that's that's awesome. And he's like, what he didn't really. I'm just, you know, did you see this comment here? Like, yeah, um, but, you know, that's it. So we definitely I'm glad we brought Caleb on when we did. And it was super cool to have somebody in the background just running that while we do this. And you guys, you know, you have a tight group every week and it's cool that you guys kind of have help each other out with that. It seems like I don't know that for sure. My side feels like I stand by it. Chaos. Um, so that's that's cool, dude. And we've got obviously you have a ton of content coming out on your channel.  I try a video a week. Now this this past Sunday was the first time this year. I haven't done that. And it was just because I needed to give Caleb some time.  So, uh, dude, I'm dude, I'm hunting right now. I'm looking for an editor. I think the guys have been asking me and my wife, my wife has been asking me for a very long time to get an editor. And that has been the last little piece of this that I'd like. I just cannot let go of, you know, to like let go of control of that. And I think I finally just hit like a wall and I need to I need to take that hat off and give it to somebody else. So, uh, I'm going to join you in that soon. You, it's got to be nice, right? Not heavy. Oh, it's, it's really nice. So, so the goods and bads, right? It's amazing to be age area. I see on there, um, it's amazing to be able to film and then shoot a video over and then have like, um, Hey, I'm going to post it this date. Can you have it ready by this date kind of thing? Right. Yeah. Um, where it gets you is that, um, not all the time. Can you say this thing just came out, the newest, latest, greatest laser just came out. I want to film it at it tonight to release tomorrow because it's new, you know, on YouTube, everything's about being the first person or one of the first and, and then really that's kind of true, but in most cases, there's so many of us, I say, watch them all, watch everything you can on, on a product you're looking for, because Alex may have a different experience than I have. Yeah, we may have the same experience on a ranger threes, but he has a different take because he has different experiences than I do. And so where I'm like, dude, this thing is shiny and white. It burns everything I want it to burn. The engravings are amazing. You're like, you should check out under the hood because this is in its place. All of this, you know what I mean? So like you put that together. Alex takes out a microscope. Let's really look at this true story. Um, but so, you know, I think it's important to get, but that's where it gets you because you can't just film something. Unless it's like one of you guys, right? You can't just film something and then expect it to be done in the morning when you could have stayed up and done it yourself. Right. Um, now that being said, I've asked that of Caleb a few times, like, hey, man, if I do this today, can you burn it tonight? Um, to get it out ASAP. And he's, he's gone along with it, but it's a lot of time to edit a lot of times, you know, especially my rambling.  Plus everything, we have all these other communities that we have to manage to not just YouTube and I just, the edit takes two weeks. You know what I mean? If I just sat down and just done it, like I, I probably could have done it in eight hours, 15 hours, whatever, but that's not how life works and that's not how community management works. So I, yeah, it's just, it's time. So I'm glad to hear that. Overall, he does, he has a full-time job. He does that for work too. So he actually has to find time after his job, which is doing the same thing to edit and, um, and, but it's, it's awesome though, because it frees you up, right? So you can, um, I can, I can film a video today and know that it's going to be edited and ready to go when I want to post it next Sunday or this Sunday or whatever, you know what I mean? And, uh, the, the other thing is, I got a pre-plan. So because he has certain days that he can edit, if I want to release on Sunday, I need to have everything to him the Sunday before. Right. Um, that way he has the week to get, get it to me. I always ask for my videos on Friday if we can, right? Um, so that's another thing that I'm really trying to get better at is pre-planning my videos, not just today, right?  And, um, if you find somebody that is in the style you like, that's another thing, that's the big thing is, um, you got to find someone that Caleb, Caleb, uh, his editing is kind of the character of my videos besides me talking, right? Yeah, he's part of it, dude. It's so much. Yeah. It's so, it carries so much weight. Yeah. Yeah. And if you get somebody that's just meh, your videos, it could be like, I'm going to give everyone of you a million dollars. It could be that awesome, a Mr. B style video, then you have somebody edited that doesn't mesh with you. And yeah, it's the visual medium of your storytelling, because that's kind of what you're doing. It's here's my product. Here's what I think about it. Here's how it would feel like that's it.  That wasn't what did it, but we'll say it was. So, um, yeah, just so you know, you've got two minutes, two minute warning before an hour. And if you want to plug anything to plug away, sir, you, we do have links to just so much of your stuff down in the description. Yeah. I mean, like check out the channel.  We love people coming over there. Uh, we just have fun with that. Um, I think the biggest thing is, uh, instead of taking time to plug my stuff, do you have questions we can answer? Like, can we do that? Let's, let's shoot it back to the community, man. I think this whole thing, all of us here is because of the community. And it's so ridiculous, dude. I appreciate you guys giving me the time to be here, but they're here watching, man. Let's, let's answer some questions. If you, if you guys want to keep going, it's nuts. Yeah, I, I'm chill, dude. I, I every week, I'm just like, I look at our, it's so the LMA, the laser master academy that we mentioned earlier, 2,900 subscribers, it's 2,900 people that are like, here's eight bucks every month. And every time I look at that, dude, I'm just like, what the hell?  Like that there's like that man. That's a lot of people, dude. As an outsider to that, right? Um, I pay my subscription. I didn't ask you for one. I didn't even tell you I was subscribing. I didn't even know you subscribed until you get like five minutes ago. Right. So, so the thing is, like as an outsider into that, this is, the community is different that you have because the people who are there are paying to want to be there. Right. So you don't have the garbage that you see on some of the forums and Facebook pages, because you have these people that can come on to say whatever they want, because these people are here. Here's eight bucks.  I value what you're giving me in return. I'm going to be here to help people most of the time because that's the community you guys have built. And I appreciate that because, um, it's not an easy thing to do for one.  Yeah, the community is much tighter because everybody wants to be there. And everybody made a sacrifice to be there. Yeah. However, you know what I mean? However small, however, you know, a month, a month, really quick. Before we do those, I just, I have to shout out Kyle down here, uh, because Kyle is 99% of the face behind the laser, everything support account on the LMA. Uh, so if you've had a question, uh, or a concern or some kind of technical problem that has been answered and has helped you somehow, it is probably not been me because I've been doing business stuff lately. It's probably been Kyle. So thank you, Kyle, for taking care of our LMA community. Dude, because, uh, happy to do it. We would be so effed without you. So thank you. I do have the BLD 0 5 5 0, uh, Jim is a CNC. You reviewed a couple of years ago still on your channel to be fair. I never even did a review of it. I did an unboxing. Uh, I love that it's, I have a one affinity, uh, CNC machinist. Um, is what the machine's called one affinity machinist.  Yes, it's still around. And yes, you'll see content this year on it. So just a heads up. Awesome. All right. And by the way, this was the question that people were asking about in the chat on the side, saying, Hey, what's going on? Yeah. Um, and it's from Neil saying any thoughts on the X tools P two, which is the thing that we were, I think we talked about it a couple of weeks ago when we had heard about it, but any information or thoughts? We would say, um, that we were chatting about that one with Michael, it's the CO2. And I was like, it does neat party tricks, but I don't even have a price and we don't know enough about it. You know, I want to know what kind of tube that thing is running. I think the last time I checked their website, it was still like those teaser videos that don't really show anything except I think some people have them now flips. Yeah, but I'm not sure. I saw one recently. He was like, this is the laser and here's some videos from their channel, but I can't show you what the laser does yet.  Um, well, they are one of those, they, they like handle marketing kind of a weird way. I don't know. Well, and this is a price there. There you go. Hmm. Yeah. I don't, I don't think it has some cool stuff. Um, I don't, I think it's going to be a cool machine if you're in the market for something that like Alex says does party tricks, but it will never do what a ranger three can do. It doesn't work with like, it does work with like the P2. Yeah, I believe so. Oh, the party, well, you know what, that's a good question. The party tricks do not because it, and that's part of like my, I just did the X tool and like all of the party trick stuff is limited to X tool creative suite. So the things like the rolling pass through. You know, just sweet, by the way, super sweet. You're not, unless Jason isn't telling me something, you're not doing that in Leipzig, you know what I mean? So just, just some things to keep in mind. And yeah, this is almost the same price. If not a little more than well, and here's more. And so for the people who aren't watching this and are catching on the podcast, uh, Neil also said to ET laser, they're having a discussion in the sidebar there. Um, I should be ordering that this week with risers, auto pass through feeder, the pro rotary comes in at 4,500 pounds, which E2 laser later said is about 5,100 with shipping. Uh, and the mid-May is the, uh, so six weeks out there. Is that a six weeks? Yeah. No, I can't, I can't ever, I don't think it's going to be a bad machine. I think it's going to do, you could buy a glow forge, uh, and it's not going to be a bad machine. Yeah. It's just they're different machines, right? Um, no offense, but needed to do. Yeah.  Once you start, you're going to be like, okay, I need this. So, and I agree with you because like you said, you got to use laser for your first CO2. And I did the same thing. I literally went on to the boss laser group because my brother owned 24 36, which is like the medium grade to almost big boy. And, uh, he was like, Hey man, I'm really digging mine.  He's just typing Tampa. And so I typed in Tampa and there was a guy who had one, it was over across the state, but it was like a three hour drive through it in the back of the F-150. Done. Yeah. Like had it in my house like a week later. Nice. That's awesome. I, I, you know, I can't fault anybody for wanting to start with anything used as long as it works. Yeah. Um, because, because we'll put it this way a lot of times, if you're like me, you'll get into a hobby and then you'll use it for like a couple months and never touched the thing again. Right. Um, you'll get super excited. You'll learn, you'll do it all and then it'll go to the side because you're doing something different. If you buy that used, it's a lot easier to, to leave that money than a $5,000 laser on the side of your, you know what I mean? And that actually goes right into the next question that Scully238 asked, what's the best way in our opinion for someone to purchase a fiber laser that can't shell out the massive prices? There's a couple of answers to that one. Is it for personal or for business? If it's for business, you can start, well, a, if your business is already running, cool. If it's not start up a business and see if you can get a business loan because then you're open up, you're not stuck to one brand or one company that can do financing. You can go with anything. Another thing I'll shout out too, because we were just talking about used lasers and the LMA, the LMA guys, uh, it's so people are paying to be there, uh, no, far less like scammy dangerous situations. We don't allow buying selling trading on any of our communities. We don't allow it on discord and allow it on Facebook anywhere. Uh, but we do allow it on the LMA. Again, because those people are paying to be there and, uh, fairly often machines go up for sale in the buy, sell trade there at a people who are us. Yeah. Yeah. At a, at a decent discount. Uh, I'm sure that those are negotiable. So that might be another place you want to check. Uh, if you want like a reliable place where you can look at and if you're looking at fiber, if you're not looking to do something crazy, um, probably like a coin like this, right, you can, you can get started, get started with one of those little, um, they're making those little machines now that actually are 1064. They have that too. Yeah. I think there's a few of them now. Um, there's a couple of tools coming out with the, is it the F one or the F one? Yeah. If it ever shows up, like I've been promised for three months, it was going to show up. It hasn't yet. Just a heads up. Um, but that'll have a dual laser in it. It'll have a diode and at the 1064. Right. Yep.  So do you look for one that's used and save your money a little bit or do you want to just get started, you know, because those are never going to do something the bigger ones are going to do, but they'll get you into it to see if you like it, right? And that's also where you can, and again, we've talked about this. So there's financing is one option, but then like Jim just said, if you start here and you realize you can actually make money with this thing, you can pay this one off, sell that machine, take the earnings plus the price of your sold machine and make some stuff and earn the money for your next one. Right. That's what I'm saying. That's the thing.   And it keeps me learning new things to get new projects in there. I don't get rich because I don't that's not where I'm at. Right. Yeah. But I've thrown stuff on Facebook, like the groups, the buy, sell, trade groups and stuff for like Christmas. I was doing these CNC lanterns. I sold like freaking 40 of them just from the buy, sell, trade groups and, you know, for two dollars in material, but I'm selling them for 25 bucks a piece. That was a good deal. By the way, right now at the end of the school year, like graduation stuff is huge where literally you can go buy foam, foam board from Uline, the foam core board and literally make signs for like two bucks a piece that are two foot by three foot wide and sell them for $40, like, you know, CO 23 gym. Don't forget your ventilation, though. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about that. Yeah. Like, I mean, there's so many things you can do. Like you said, for like a hundred bucks, you can turn that into five or six hundred. Yeah. There you go. Yeah.  A lot of times you can pay for those materials to get more materials just by making some cool stuff. I'm in this.  But coming from a 40 Watt CO2 Chinese machine, sticker shock is a real thing, especially when I want a MOPA. There are a lot of corners in the laser world that can be cut and fibers not an area where you should be cutting them. So make sure that you are spending the right amount of money on your fiber laser. Do not race to the bottom. You will regret it. Like these machines are technically complicated enough. It's not just a gantry anymore with some mirrors. It's like there's a lot of stuff going on in these machines, guys, a lot of stuff going on in these machines. And when you cut too many of the corners to get the price down low enough, you start running into real problems with very little use. We've seen it here from our community many, many times. This is an area where you want to spend a minimum amount of money. And of course, that's going to vary, that's going to change depending on what you're looking for, what you want to spend. So I'm not even going to spout off any numbers right now. Right. I'm just saying, like, if you get a low end, like omtech knockoff red and black machine, you can put your hands in there and like fix it and make it do the things you want it to do with like a little grit and patience. You know, you're not doing that with a Galvo laser. That's not how the situation works.  That's just six hundred dollars out the window and you buy a new one. So be careful. Just my warning, I don't want to be like a party pooper on the low price stuff. But be careful with Galvos, you know, that spend a medium amount of money. And there's there's some good people. There's a couple of people in the community that make pretty decent ones. Right. I mean, I've seen a lot of is it Pascale or Pascale? Yep. Yep. Galvo is the laser from Paschal. Matt has a laser from Paschal and we've got a ton of great options that don't cost a fortune on our buying guide to one of the resources on our website, which is great.  I mean, like we've actually like ripped those pieces.  A lot of really great options. So if you see one and it's like flying kite fiber laser design company and it's like a 30 watt laser and it's a thousand bucks. It's not the deal of a lifetime, dude. That's like the van that says free candy inside. Dude, for real. Don't do it. You seem legit. Yeah. Well, I got to say before we move too far, guys, get a second job. If you want it, go earn something. Yes, stop. You don't have to finance stuff. And I worked for a second job for a year. I didn't play no games. I said, this is important. I will work hard.  You know, like to me, I got the best that I could afford because I didn't want to play games and tinker. I'm not a tinker. I do physical therapy. I do knees and hips. I don't. Yeah, I don't know. No. But anyway, this is a tinker or a body. Yes, right. Well, no, and if you just get a second job, man, you can get whatever you want. 100% agree. I was actually that was I was waiting for my chance to go in there while I understand if you have to, like, if it's something where you have no other option. Great. I don't believe in finance. I don't care if it's a 3D printer. I don't care if it's these Raycon earbuds, right? If you don't have to finance, don't because you're going to. What's going to do is you're going to put pressure on yourself to have to pay to earn it, like to own it, right? So save the money. It takes you a year. It takes you a year to get there. But in a year, you'll know if you still want that thing and you're not buying a $5,000 paperweight that's going to sit in your garage. You're never going to use again. Right. The other thing about that is, is exactly, exactly. It's not like January at the gym, right? Where you sign up and you never go again after March. But but the thing is, though, for me, the big thing is you just said you earned it. You made it. If you have any other lasers, sell some stuff to earn the money. But but the other the other big thing is do not. Whatever you're looking at, don't go the cheap route like Alex said. And and don't go for the lowest power. So like inevitably, whether it's a 3D printer, it's a laser, a new phone, speakers. As soon as you start using them, you want more from it, right? You want to push it harder. You want to push it faster. Save the money. Get the next step up from what you want because because if you don't in six months, you're going to be like, now I need to save $6000 for the next step. And it's funny to say that because Willie Sims, which is one of our regulars, he literally, I don't know if you know him or not, but he did that. He got it. Yeah, he got a 30 watt. And after like a couple of weeks, he was like, man, he's like, I could get it done so much quicker and I could do so much more. And then he ended up getting a J.P.T. when he saw that the frequency and all that stuff, he got them over the J.P.T. But he got a power source and he shipped it over from Pascal and had put it into his machine. And literally, he was just like night and day, boom, like he's just knocking stuff out. But, you know, but he also did what Boyce said, had a side hustle for his side hustle and like paid for it with that.  But these days, you can do anything, drive a Uber. Oh, yeah. Like start aggressively media, you know, like aggressive. There you go. Oh, there you go, Scully. I paid my dial pay for itself in three weeks. That dial will make some bank. It will. It might be. It might take you six weeks to burn a thousand coasters. You just got an order for. But you'll make good money. Yeah, you make three bucks. Amazing. Yeah, I was selling coasters like as soon as I started doing that when I got my diode, you will not believe how many friends and family just from posting on your own Facebook page will look up and say, I love Buffy the bandfire slayer. I love it. It doesn't matter what it is. I love Metallica. Can you make those? I mean, should you and can you are a thing, right? But but the thing is like you got to be careful with all that, right? But the thing is, you know, people will start reaching out to you and you could buy those coasters for super cheap, make them for 50 cents a piece or whatever it really costs and sell the set for twenty five dollars for four. Yeah. You do that a few times. Now you got a hundred bucks. Now you got five hundred dollars, right? And those lasers will pay for themselves. Find a user and make sure it works and usually I literally went to Ikea. That's like a friend of mine was like, how did you pay off your first laser? And I said, I went to Ikea. I bought at the at the time, the little cheeseboards were five dollars for like it was like five ninety nine. And I literally would put in like Jim's kitchen. Yeah. And that's it. You know, like Alex's kitchen and it was the same exact thing. But I'd post it and say twenty five bucks and people would come over and every time I would buy five for twenty five dollars and I sold one and paid for all of them. And then the rest were just profit. And I'm like, yes. I also this exact right on the podcast again, like a week or two ago, just a quick shout out to the the Alex and Matt's of the audience who buy things on credit because they need the pressure of the payment to succeed. There you go. It's a real phenomenon. I talked about at length performance. Dude, I swear to God, like when you know that payment's coming up, you hustle so much. What's funny is right before I was actually doing a credit card payment and I looked at that and I was like, I think I ended up. So if we're talking about a business finance in laser or is it Blonde Fox creation earlier, you have to have two years of being in business to get a finance loan. So that's accurate. So that's where I looked at it and I actually did the math on it. And I think I basically paid one hundred and eighty bucks in interest to have that thing at my door in eleven days. But it was also because I had had my laser over here. I got a job for a large order that made it where this was worth getting. And it also took that job that was supposed to be a 10 hour job and turned it into a four hour job. So it's just and then right off the bat, I knocked off like fifteen hundred bucks of the whatever it cost that I got. You know, I was like and that does not work for everybody. You know, voice financed his mirror.  And and probably off for some of the aneurysm. Yeah, so I'm just I just wanted to acknowledge the people out there that thrive off of the gun to the head because I think they have a game plan. Not if you are going to save for it first, man. That's the way to do it.  Worker and exactly for there. But the next comment, you cannot make a company built on family and friends. Listen, see that one. You I apologize, but that's not correct. You start with family and friends. Word of mouth gets you outside of that circle of family and friends. And then you go from there and you have to start somewhere, right?  If you don't make that first key chain and who do you think is going to buy that?  It's going to buy that. And then they're going to say, look what I got. Did you see what Jim made me? It's amazing. There you go. I ran a DJ company for 15 years on Word of Mouth and it started with a family and friends. Yeah, I made a lot of money. I wish I still made that money. I just wasn't worth the hours eventually, but it started there and you have to start somewhere. I'm not saying you're you're not going to like live forever on your family and friends because they're only going to buy so much, right? But you've got to start somewhere. My first companies, yeah, or for first recurring purchases were from people who it was like a former student of mine's mom was a realtor and she was like, I want cups, give me 30 cups.  But it was recurring. She was like, I need those once a quarter and I'm just like, you know, just to stack on top of that, too. We one of the things that we preach on our channel all the time is or at least I don't speak for the other guys is that you have to like start with a local market and then expand to a larger like online market. I feel like a lot of people want to skip that and just like start selling online. And that's like the much harder path because selling things online costs money. And if you have a local market of people that know you and are buying things from you funding that online expansion, it is significantly easier. So just like that would just be like the next step. So from friends and family to like, you know, local small business from local small business to like online seller. Now you're like national. And if you if you take the stairs instead of like the ladder, it's easier to go up, you know, so I just wanted to throw that in. Like I say, this this comment caught my this is actually a pretty cool idea. That's awesome fabric for seamstresses. Like that's dope. I could see a cool thing you find out and just back in 2020. Alex, weren't you cutting fabric for masks and stuff, too? Yeah, I did. I did when we did. That's a good moneymaker. We had nothing else to do. We had nothing else to do, but this one guy rolled in one day with like a wheelbarrow full of t-shirts, t-shirts, like actual full size. Like works in t-shirts, they're like double XL.   And he would just bring them in by like the box and we just cut them up. It was bizarre because they're good t-shirts, but I never thought of lasering fabric to be 100 percent honest. Yeah, the CO2 is good for that. Great job of cutting fabric, yep. I will say my first reoccurring jobs came from actually giving my sister a slate coaster and that turned into, well, can you do that on something that doesn't shatter if we drop it? Because they had kids around. Absolutely. I could do that on Cork, no problem. Right, and a friend saw it and then another friend saw of their friends. And yeah, now I just keep getting asked for slate coasters and Cork coasters. So Sun Turtle Camper has been a super patient asking this question twice. So I want to make sure we see it. Worker and consumer security always needs to be number one. What does the panel think about cheap lasers without enclosures and or air management? I think we've talked about this quite a bit before too. Yeah, you can always do air management on your own, right? And you can always make your own enclosure. But you have to be cognizant of the safety concerns around it.  I mean, these are all liabilities. You don't want your significant other family member child going blind, right? Or even just the thought of them going blind is bad. So you need to be cognizant of that. So maybe I'd look better. There's nothing wrong with those kinds of lasers. As long as you take the necessary safety precautions, it's when you just unbox the thing and toss it on the desk and just use it like that. That's the problem. I wouldn't even argue that you need an enclosure.  See, again, like two episodes for a rant about that. Just wear the glass. People will do anything to not wear safety glasses. Well, the thing is something you're something that I think that some internal camper is not thinking about. We have a brand new fiber laser sitting in my garage. It's wide open, right? Same precautions need to be taken as our tour laser master, too. That sits, you know, 10 feet from it because it's wide open. You're literally shooting that fiber that fiber laser with no enclosure currently. I'm going to make one, actually. I'm working on that. But but you do have to be careful. Now air is another thing. Do it in open air if you can and get those fumes out of there because especially like fiber, right? You don't want to breathe in this powder. No, that goes in. It doesn't come out. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm actually a creative line talking to Kyle about what he used and stuff. I had a four inch run going to it dedicated. And I was like, this isn't this isn't enough. So I just bought a six inch blower. I'm going to bring it down to four at the laser and stay tuned. Actually, I'm working with a guy named Trent, a good friend of mine. He's a super good modeler, fusion 360 modeler, not a model. And we have a super cool coming. I think it's super cool coming for the fiber lasers that not sure how he's going to give the files away if he's going to give them away or how that's going to work yet. That's his deal. He's designed it. I said, this would be sweet. Jay Mac was like, wouldn't it be cool if we had this? And I was like, I know a guy, so like credit him to. But that will be coming in a video because I want to get that out there. But it's you got to get that air out. If you're burning leather, leather, don't do it. Like that. Yeah, that was the question he had next. Don't do it. There's a laser safe leather that's called laser safe leather or leatherette. And if it's not called that, you should not be lasering it because yeah, most likely polyvinyl chloride.  And it equally terrifyingly fast rate. Yeah. So always don't cut it. It's not worth it. Same thing with ABS. Yeah. Shout out to my boy, ABS.  So vinyl of any kind, polyvinyl chloride. ABS, just stay away from them. People always do the the thing where they cut records, bro. Yeah, the record player, man. Record, the record cutters out there. Tar records. They're cutting like classic records into like a bunch of different shapes. And it's, dude, that's like the most dangerous thing you could possibly do with that machine. So stay away from that. And polystyrene, if we're making a list. Also, here is Medusa. This is the one part of my laser setup. That has not been cleared out. So this was a, this is an eight inch inline centrifuge fan that goes, it's adapted from eight down to six down to four. And then it has a three way four splitter that went to my, my Galvo lasers, my CO2 laser and my dial lasers. So even in like a small residential setting, because I'm just in my tiny apartment right now like this, you, you really want to make sure you're getting those fumes out of your house, guys, like for real. Yeah. Yeah. Exhaust is part of the complex. Safety comes first and exhaust falls under safety. Luckily, I'm in a duplex, so I don't have to worry about neighbors, but I won't be soon, which is why we had to move all of the lasers out of the house and take them back to the shop. Just be careful. It just use, use your head. If it's not safe, someone mentioned pets exactly. You don't want pets can get blind to. Yeah. So and, and if you do, like I built a box for my or tour, it was literally a box that had a hinge top and a hinge drop down front.  I bought some fireballs where the shire occurs. It like explodes, explodes in there and puts the powder explosion thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I put one of those. It was a smaller one. I put it in there along with everything, sucking it out with a four inch blower. And I didn't even have a window. I didn't I bought some J. Photonics, you know, laser, laser glass or laser acrylic, really. Yeah. And I never did the window. I threw a wise cam in there and then I was like, you know, whatever it's closed. I don't have to worry about it. I can look at it from the camera and I ran. I still have it. I don't use that laser admittedly very often because I have the other ones now. But I run it like that because it's safer for everybody. And the camera, the wise cams are 25 bucks. Yeah, it's cheap. You can watch it anywhere you're at. Don't leave your lasers on a tent with a burning. But you can watch it like 10 feet away when you're doing something different and not worry about it. Well, and one more thing, too, to consider like this doesn't stop a dog from getting blinded or pepper being blinded. But like Alex, I know Kyle does it and I've started to having a camera that you put somewhere that you literally can use to to view because people have said that before, too. So basically, it allows you if you're on your phone, like I actually know my brother used to do that where he would have it. He'd have to go inside for just a second. But he had his phone with him the entire time and he could see. So it was like a run out there and stop, the kind of thing. But also like you can put the camera above the actual laser and have that way the angle of incidence because remember, like, raise, you know, go that way. So it's one of those things to consider, too, just to keep your eyes from directly being looking at it and have animals and all that stuff. Keep it up a little higher. Right? I mean, I keep mine on all the time. Um, currently I I was rearranging stuff. So this this I was going to show you a view of it. And I just realized I moved it right before I came here. I'm rerunning all the duct work in the back for that for the fiber. I totally forgot I moved the freaking camera. But, you know, I have them here in the studio. I have them on my printers. You know, just the wise can use whatever camera you want. Right. Some people use cell phones. Like I just like $40 ones. Yeah, you can use your USB webcam to a computer sitting in the enclosure, if that's all you can do. Also, I wanted to just mention this. David Bennett says I did the same thing with my diode after seeing that episode, Jim, have my diode in a grow tent. Just be careful about the grow tents because some of them are made out of PVC. So your diode is doing like an overlap or like, you know, one that like cuts through material. If it's like marking any kind of like bottom surface of like that tent, you might be getting in trouble. So just something to keep an eye on. But yeah, those have worked really well in the past. That was that's a big thing. People started grabbing those and using them as enclosures for the diodes. I have a few of them. I don't use them very often, but it's it's cool. And a lot of, you know, the ones I have are like shiny inside, too. So it's going to reflect a little bit then instead of hopefully blow through it if it does. But yeah, I don't know at 90 minutes. I am at risk of being murdered by my wife because neither of my children are in bed. So I'm going to call it here. But Jim, edge of tech, guys, I obviously you've heard of it. I don't even need to like say if you haven't heard of it, go subscribe. You're already all subscribed to Jim's channel.  Got the hook up. Check out Hot Makes Mondays at 6 p.m. Central. Six, seven p.m. your time and four p.m. on the other side of the coast, I guess. Imagine, imagine being a California and check all that stuff out. Check out the laser everything playlist. If you guys are looking to do something and you're watching on my channel as well, trust me, it helps so much. And also, you're going to be in Loveland, Colorado, which is super random. There's a 3D printing event.  There's going to be vendors. There's a ton of makers coming next weekend, the 22nd and 23rd. They're giving me a microphone, allowing me to see the event. Essentially, we're going to have battle racers, which are essentially like 3D printed battle bots kind of. They're like tanks, battle each other and 3D printed drag racers. And it's free to attend if you get there. So come say hi, meet us in person or meet some of us in person and stuff like that. I feel like at least a dozen people are just like, oh, my God, I am going to be in Colorado, but yeah, I love one. I'll be in Loveland. Yeah. It's super random. It's awesome. They have a huge, huge turnout so far. I think they have over 2,000 people as of last night. There was almost 2,100 people registered. It's free to attend if you get there, right? You just got to get there. It's super easy to get there from Denver, just north. But it's I wish we could do an event like that for lasers. Like, oh, we can. Is there a thing like out there that I'm missing? Because I don't see. I mean, really do it. Jason's doing his little light burn experience. I'll be extra. I'll be extra in Illinois, I think. Yeah, Peoria, Illinois in the end of October. I should be there as well. I think that's over 23rd, I think I think it's going to be a few months before we're there and like laser armor, like shooting them at each other for like, you know, like hardcore laser tag. But it could be in our future. We don't know, you know, that would be fun. Yeah, yeah, that's not too far from me. No, it's very close to you. You may have to go as a channel representative. I told Jason I can't go this year because of the baby, but I'm prepared. What is that? It's his travel camera. Oh, I thought it was a four-stage camera, but it's a little cake. All right, guys, you have a super, super camera in your pocket, probably. I'm just going to guess, like, but no, thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it any time. Let me know any time. I love hanging out. It was a lot of fun later, bro. I want to talk about the the innards of the home tech. I want to get more into the ranger. I want to see how that ends up doing for you over the long term. And of course, you know, catch up on like 3D printing. Maybe Kyle will have one by then. He's been looking for off to collab at some point. I'm not sure where you are, Kyle, but if you I may see something for you. I'm not sure where you are in the world, but OK. And we will catch up on that. Guys, thank you. Thank you so much for watching this episode of the laser source podcast. If you haven't already. Don't forget to smash the like button. Let everybody else know the content is good. And don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you get notified the next time we go live, especially when Jim's back. Don't want to miss that. And of course, again, for the 80 billionth time, follow Jim on everything. Give him some money. Do something. Just support him. I think you have a Patreon link down there in the description. I think I do, yeah. Go hit up his Patreon, guys. Like just this guy is like a service to the community. Help him out. And I don't know. What are the other things we tell people to do? But we just want you to go buy merch.  Oh, no, don't buy. Go please. This is free. This doesn't cost anything.  It really helps us to to find a new audience. You know, Jim, how important those five star ratings are because you guys hot makes is like an audio podcast, too, right? Or is it video only? Well, we haven't done that a long time. We ran out of bandwidth to throw it up on the podcast. So we did for a long time and we haven't now for a long time. Yeah, for sure. For sure. It makes a huge difference. Five star rating. You don't have to you don't have to write a review. Just let us know how often you think voice has to wet shave in order to maintain the shape of the skull. And I don't know. Go listen to emergency stop. It's our non work podcast. If you want to hear some gross stories about things that happen outside of work from these idiots down here, not for kids place to do that emergency stop.net, not for children. And I think that's all I've got, guys. Thank you so much for watching and we will see you in the next one. Everybody.