Cut Sheet Metal With Your Homemade Laser

co2 lazer

i recieved an email from owen the other day:

fellow hackologists may be interested in a year and half long project of mine to build a computer controlled sheet metal cutting system. It uses a 100 watt CO2 industrial laser.

there are some videos on his site showing the co2 laser milling machine in action. it’s absolutely fantastic. just the control system itself is pretty intense. if you are interested in doing something like this, you should also check out his blog that chronicled the whole contruction.

i’m pretty sure i need one of these.

update: apparently i can’t spell (thanks pedant). i was thinking it was z for zippy.

24 thoughts on “Cut Sheet Metal With Your Homemade Laser

  1. Forgive my ignorance, but for metal cutting wouldn’t a plasma cutter be the preferred option? CO2 lasers are great, and obviously do the job, but aren’t there some limits as to the thickness that this unit can cut versus a CNC plasma cutter?

  2. laser cutting does have limits on thickness, however the advantage is a much much better surface finish and quality of cut. Most cnc laser cutters trace a very fine path which is almost comparable to wire EDM. Compared to laser or wire EDM the plasma cutter is a much rougher cut.

  3. Another thing is the fact that plasma is a very large-scale thing- you wouldn’t be able to cut a lacy 3″ long insect wing out of ~20ga sheet steel on a plasma, it’d just be obliterated.

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  5. Our services are:

    – IT Consulting Services
    – System Analysis and Design
    – Web-based Application Development
    – Internet Marketing Solutions
    – SEO consulting
    – Web site & Applications Desiging
    – Free consulting
    – Industrial Database

  6. Our services are:

    – IT Consulting Services
    – System Analysis and Design
    – Web-based Application Development
    – Internet Marketing Solutions
    – SEO consulting
    – Web site & Applications Desiging
    – Free consulting
    – Industrial Database

  7. Hi, Ive been an operator of a laser cutter for 9 yrs & I just loved the smooth cut it did on the machine i used. It was a Big laser 820 with 1200w of power. thickest we ever cut was 50mm plate at a rate of 600mm/min, but it was a good cut. We had 6 mm plates cut at 1200mm/min speed, really nice & smoothe cut.Acrylic 6mm was at 2500mm/min.it just depends on the machine. But it all fun to be a laser cutter.

  8. Yours appeares to be quite different system.
    We are manufacturers & exExporters of Sheet Metal components. We havea Amada Turret Punchand
    Amada Press Brake.

    We are looking for lase and water jet cutting equipment. Please provide details.

  9. I’d really like to build a CNC laser metal-cutting system – hopefully using open source software. But, you’re links to Jason Striegel are not active (“page not found”). Can you help me track down this original contribution? Thanks!

    J. Wm. Burrill

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