The 20w and 40w lasers include a cooling fan the pulls air from the top of the unit, past cooling fins, the out the bottom. When the laser is working on wood, especially cutting 3mm basswood, there is a lot of smoke created. Even with a 4" inline fan pulling air out of the enclosure (in addition to the little enclosure fan) the chamber fills with smoke while cutting. That smoky air gets pulled through the laser to cool it and quickly causes the fan and cooling fins to clog with smoke dust. There has to be a better way.
The best solution is drawing clean air from outside the enclosure. I found a model on Thingaverse for a cap/shroud that adds a hose adaptor to the top of the laser / cooling air inlet, but I’ve been unable to find a suitable hose. Everything I’ve found so far is too heavy and rigid. My next option is simpler and involves making a small filter to attach to the hose adaptor by wrapping furnace filter material over a small wire birdcage and zip tying that to the hose adaptor. We’ll see how that works.
Currently, I have to disassemble and clean the laser after each project that includes a lot of wood cutting / engraving. My last project was a 13 layer clock (13x 300mm/2 sheets of 3mm basswood) and that nearly choked out the cooling fins in the laser completely. Cleaning is a pain. Simply blowing out with compressed air doesn’t get the job done. It takes a lot of Q-tips, pipe cleaners and alcohol to get the job done.