Scratch-Built CO2 Laser Tube Kicks Off A Laser Cutter Build

March 31, 2021 by 30 Comments

When we see a CO2 laser cutter build around these parts, chances are pretty good that the focus will be on the mechatronics end, and that the actual laser will be purchased. So when we see a laser cutter project that starts with scratch-building the laser tube, we take notice.

[Cranktown City]’s build style is refreshingly informal, but there’s a lot going on with this build that’s worth looking at — although it’s perhaps best to ignore the sourcing of glass tubing by cutting the ends off of an old fluorescent tube; there’s no mention of what became of the mercury vapor or liquid therein, but we’ll just assume it was disposed of safely. We’ll further assume that stealing nitrogen for the lasing gas mix from car tires was just prank, but we did like the rough-and-ready volumetric method for estimating the gas mix.

The video below shows the whole process of building and testing the tube. Initial tests were disappointing, but with a lot of tweaking and the addition of a much bigger neon sign transformer to power the tube, the familiar bluish-purple plasma made an appearance. Further fiddling with the mirrors revealed the least little bit of laser output — nowhere near enough to start cutting, but certainly on the path to the ultimate goal of building a laser cutter.

We appreciate [Cranktown City]’s unique approach to his builds; you may recall his abuse-powered drill bit index that we recently covered. We’re interested to see where this laser build goes, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted.

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Hackaday Podcast 107: FTDI Plays Music, LED Dimming Ain’t Easy, Measuring Poop Calories, And Sketchy Laser Cutters

February 26, 2021 by No comments

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams gab about all of the geeky things. We had a delightful time watching NASA bring Perseverance down to the Red planet. In Kristina’s words, we pour one out for Fry’s Electronics. And then we jump into a parade of excellent hacks with a magnetic bearing for crooked ball screws, a science-based poop-burning experiment, and the music hack only microcontroller enthusiasts could love as an FTDI cable is plugged directly into a speaker. Smart circuit design is used to hack a dimmer into non-dimmable LED fixtures, and an octet of living clams are the early warning sensors for water pollution.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (~60 MB)

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Hands On With The Ortur Laser Cutter

February 23, 2021 by 63 Comments

I couldn’t write very much without a computer. Early in my career, I wrote with a typewriter. Unless you are pretty close to perfect — I’m not — it is very frustrating to make edits on typewritten stuff. The equivalent in the real world, for me, has been 3D printers and CNC machines. I can visualize a lot of things that I’m not careful enough to build with normal tools. Despite my 7th-grade shop teacher’s best efforts, everything I did turned out to be a toothpick or a number 7. But I can get my ideas into CAD and from there the machines do the rest. That’s why I was excited to get a laser cutter this past Christmas. You might wonder why I’d need a laser cutter if I have the other tools. Then again, if you read Hackaday, you probably don’t need me to explain why you need a new gadget. I’ve had my eye on a laser for a good long time, but recent developments made it more attractive. I thought I’d share with you some of what I’ve found getting started with the Ortur laser cutter. The cutter is easy to put together and costs somewhere in the $200-$400 range depending on what you get with it. I thought I’d take some time to share what I’ve learned about it.

Why a Laser?

If you haven’t had experience with a laser cutter or engraver before, you might think it is a very specific instrument. Sure, the Ortur is good at engraving some things (but not all things). It can cut some things, too, but not as many things as a big serious laser cutter. However, creative people find lots of ways to use cutting and engraving to produce things you might not expect.

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3D Printer? Laser Cutter? CNC? Yes, Please

February 10, 2021 by 60 Comments

Most of us have, or, would like to have a 3D printer, a laser engraver, and a CNC machine. However, if you think about it naively, these machines are not too different. You need some way to move in the XY plane and, usually, on the Z axis, as well.

Sure, people mount extruders on CNCs, or even lasers or Dremel tools on 3D printers. However, each machine has its own peculiarities. CNCs need rigidity. 3D printers should be fast. Laser engravers and CNCs don’t typically need much Z motion. So common sense would tell you that it would be tough to make a machine to do all three functions work well in each use case. [Stefan] thought that, too, until he got his hands on a Snapmaker 2.0.

As you can see in the video below, the machine uses different tool heads for each function. The motion system stays the same and, curiously, there are three identical linear motion modules, one for each axis.

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3D Finger Joints For Your Laser Cutter

December 12, 2020 by 3 Comments

A laser cutter is an incredibly useful tool and they are often found in maker spaces all over. They’re quite good at creating large two-dimensional objects and by cutting multiple flat shapes that connect together you can assemble a three-dimensional object. This is easier when creating something like a box with regular 90-degree angles but quickly becomes quite tricky when you are trying to construct any sort of irregular surface. [Tuomas Lukka] set out to create a dollhouse for his daughter using the laser cutter at his local hackerspace and the idea of creating all the joints manually was discouraging.

The solution that he landed on was writing a python script called Plycutter that can take in an STL file and output a series of DXF files needed by the cutter. It does the hard work of deciding how to cut out all those oddball joints.

At its core, the system is just a 3D slicer like you’d find for a 3D printer, but not all the slices are horizontal. Things get tricky if more than two pieces meet. [Tuomas] ran into a few issues along the way with floating-point round-off and after a few rewrites, he had a fantastic system that reliably produced great results. The dollhouse was constructed much to his daughter’s delight.

All the code for Plycutter is on GitHub. We’ve seen a similar technique that adds slots, finger-joints, and t-slots to boxes, but Plycutter really offers some unique capabilities.

Popping The Hood On The Flux Beamo Laser Cutter

June 22, 2020 by 27 Comments

While the K40 has brought affordable laser cutting to the masses, there’s no question that it took a lot of sacrifices to hit that sub-$400 price point. There’s a reason that we’ve seen so many upgrades and improvements made to the base model machine, but for the price it’s hard to complain. That being said, for users who don’t mind spending a bit more money for a more complete out-of-the-box experience, there are other options out there.

One of them is the beamo, from FLUX. [Frank Zhao] recently picked up one of these $1,900 USD laser cutters because he wasn’t thrilled with the compromises made on the K40. Specifically, he really liked the idea of the internal water cooling system. Oddly enough, something about using a garden hose and buckets of water to cool the laser seemed off-putting. Luckily for us, he’s got a technical eye and the free time necessary to do a teardown and objective analysis of his new toy.

The short version of the story is that [Frank] is not only happy with the results he’s getting, but finds the machine to be well designed and built. So if you’re looking for a rant, sorry. But what you will find is a methodical look at each subsystem of the beamo, complete with annotated pictures and the kind of technical details that Hackaday readers crave.

We especially like his attempts to identify parts which might be difficult to source in the future; it looks like the CO2 laser tube might be proprietary, but everything else looks fairly jellybean. That includes the Raspberry Pi 3B that’s running the show, and the off-the-shelf touch screen HDMI display used for the interface. [Frank] did note that FLUX was unwilling to give him the credentials to log into the Pi and poke around, but with direct access to the SD card, it’s not like that will stop anyone who wants to get in.

In a way, laser cutters are in a similar situation today to that desktop 3D printers were in a few years ago. The cheap ones cut so many corners that upgrades and fixes are almost a necessity, and building your own machine is often less expensive than buying a commercial offering with similar specs. While the beamo is still a bit too expensive for the average hobbyist, it’s good to see machines of this caliber are at least coming down out of the 5 figure range.

Tiny Laser Cutter Puts Micro Steppers To Work

June 3, 2020 by 33 Comments

The influx of cheap laser cutters from China has been a boon to the maker movement, if at the cost of a lot of tinkering to just get the thing to work. So some people just prefer to roll their own, figuring that starting from scratch means you get exactly what you want. And apparently what [Mike Rankin] wanted was a really, really small laser cutter.

The ESP32 Burninator, as [Mike] lovingly calls his creation, is small enough to be in danger of being misplaced accidentally. The stage relies on tiny stepper-actuated linear drives, available on the cheap from AliExpress. The entire mechanical structure is two PCBs — a vertical piece that holds the ESP32, an OLED display, the X-axis motor, and the driver for the laser, which comes from an old DVD burner; a smaller bottom board holds the Y-axis and the stage. “Stage” is actually a rather grand term for the postage-stamp-sized working area of this cutter, but the video below shows that it does indeed cut black paper.

The cuts are a bit wonky, but this is surely to be expected given the running gear, and we like it regardless. It sort of reminds us of that resin 3D-printer small enough to fit in a Christmas ornament that [Sean Hodgins] did a while back. We’d suggest not trying to hang this on a tree, though.

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