Take The Tedium Out Of Fabric Cutting, Make The Laser Do It

October 29, 2023 by Donald Papp 8 Comments

Fabric must be cut before it can be turned into something else, and [fiercekittenz] shows how a laser cutter can hit all the right bases to save a lot of time on the process. She demonstrates processing three layers of fabric at once on a CO2 laser cutter, cutting three bags’ worth of material in a scant 1 minute and 29 seconds.

The three layers are a PU (polyurethane) waterproof canvas, a woven liner, and a patterned cotton canvas. The laser does a fantastic job of slicing out perfectly formed pieces in no time, and its precision means minimal waste. The only gotcha is to ensure materials are safe to laser cut. For example, PU-based canvas is acceptable, but PVC-based materials are not. If you want to skip the materials discussion and watch the job, laying the fabric in the machine starts around [3:16] in the video.

[fiercekittenz] acknowledges that her large 100-watt CO2 laser cutter is great but points out that smaller or diode-based laser machines can perfectly cut fabric under the right circumstances. One may have to work in smaller batches, but it doesn’t take 100 watts to do the job. Her large machine, for example, is running at only a fraction of its full power to cut the three layers at once.

One interesting thing is that the heat of the laser somewhat seals the cut edge of the PU waterproof canvas. In the past, we’ve seen defocused lasers used to weld and seal non-woven plastics like those in face masks, a task usually performed by ultrasonic welding. The ability for a laser beam to act as both “scissors” and “glue” in these cases is pretty interesting. You can learn all about using a laser cutter instead of fabric scissors in the video embedded below.

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Paperless RFID Tags Are Carbon-Based

October 28, 2023 by Kristina Panos 16 Comments

RFID tags are great little pieces of technology, but unfortunately, the combination of paper, metal, and silicon means they are as bad as some modern pregnancy tests — single-use electronic devices that can’t be recycled.

A team of design program graduates from London’s Royal College of Art aim to change that. They’ve devised a mostly-paper RFID tag that’s as safe to recycle as a piece of paper with a pencil doodle on it.

The team’s startup, PulpaTronics have created a design that uses paper as its only material. The circuitry is marked on the paper with a laser set to low power, which doesn’t burn or cut the paper, but instead changes to composition to be conductive.

PulpaTronics were also able to create a chip-less RFID tag much the same way, using a pattern of concentric circles to convey information. The company estimates that these tags will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 70%, when compared with traditional RFID tags. They’ll also cost about half as much.

RFID is used in many industries, but it’s also great for hacking. Here’s an 8-track player that harnesses the power of RFID tags to play songs off of an SD card.

Thanks for the tip, [gir.st]!

Atomic Antenna Uses Lasers

October 21, 2023 by Al Williams 12 Comments

If you think about it, an antenna is nothing more than a radio frequency energy sensor, or — more precisely — a transducer. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there could be different ways to sense RF that would work as an antenna. A recent paper in Applied Physics Letters explains an atomic antenna comprised of a rubidium vapor cell.

The interesting thing is that the antenna has no electrical components in the antenna, and can be located far away from the actual receiver. Instead of coax cables, the signal is read with a laser.

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Memorialize Your Favorite Chips In Slate

October 15, 2023 by Tom Nardi 10 Comments

There’s no point in denying it — if you’re a regular reader of Hackaday, you’ve almost certainly got a favorite chip. Some in the audience yearn for the simpler days of the 6502, while others spend their days hacking on modern microcontrollers like the ESP32 or RP2040. There are even some of you out there still reaching for the classic 555. Whatever your silicon poison, there’s a good chance the Macrochips project from [Jason Coon] has supersized it for you.

The idea is simple: get a standard 100 mm x 100 mm (4″ x 4″) slate coaster, throw it in your laser engraver of choice, and zap it with a replica of a chip’s label. The laser turns the slate a light gray, which, when contrasted with the natural color of the slate, makes for a fairly close approximation of what the real thing looks like. To date, [Jason] has given more than 140 classic and modern chips the slate treatment. Though he’s only provided the SVGs for a handful of them, we’re pretty sure anyone with a laser at home will have the requisite skills to pull this off without any outside assistance.

The page credits a post from [arturo182] for the idea (Nitter), which pointed out a slate RP2040 hiding out on the corner of [Graham Sanderson]’s desk back in 2021. We just became aware of the trend when [Jason] posted his freshly engraved RP1 on Mastodon in honor of the release of the Raspberry Pi 5.

Tattoo-Removal Laser Brought Out Of Retirement For A Megawatt Of Fun

October 11, 2023 by Dan Maloney 13 Comments

We’ve got to say that [Les Wright] has the most fun on the internet, at least in terms of megawatts per dollar. Just look at his new video where he turns a $30 eBay tattoo-removal laser into a benchtop beast.

The junk laser in question is a neodymium:YAG pulse laser that clearly has seen better days, both externally and internally. The original pistol-grip enclosure was essentially falling apart, but was superfluous to [Les]’ plans for the laser. Things were better inside the business end of the gun, at least in terms of having all the pieces in place, but the teardown still revealed issues. Chief among these was the gunk and grunge that had accumulated on the laser rod and the flash tube — [Les] blamed this on the previous owner’s use of tap water for cooling rather than deionized water. It was nothing a little elbow grease couldn’t take care of, though. Especially since the rest of the laser bits seemed in good shape, including the chromium:YAG Q-switch, which allows the lasing medium to build up a huge pulse of photons before releasing them in one gigantic pulse.

Cleaned up and with a few special modifications of his own, including a custom high-voltage power supply, [Les]’ laser was ready for tests. The results are impressive; peak optical power is just over a megawatt, which is enough power to have some real fun. We’ll be keen to see what he does with this laser — maybe blasting apart a CCD camera?

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Femtosecond Laser Clones Itself In Glass

October 3, 2023 by Maya Posch 4 Comments

When researchers at the Galatea laboratory in Switzerland set out to create a femtosecond laser in glass they weren’t certain it was going to work. To be precise, their goal was to create a femtosecond laser cavity using carefully aligned optics. Rather than using the traditional, discrete method, they used a commercial femtosecond laser to carve out the elements of the optical cavity in glass. The choice for glass came down to the low thermal expansion of this material, and it being transparent for the optical frequencies being targeted.

Generic concept of an “all-glass” optical device, with the various stages of fabrication. (Credit: Antoine Delgoffe et al., 2023)

Even after using the existing laser to create the rough laser cavity, the resulting optical mirrors were not aligned properly, but this was all part of the plan.

By also adding slots that created a flexure mechanism, brief laser pulses could be used to gradually adjust the mirrors to create the perfect alignment. During subsequent testing of the newly created laser cavity it was found to be operating as expected. The original femtosecond laser had successfully created a new femtosecond laser.

Perhaps the most tantalizing aspect of this research is that this could enable much faster and ultimately cheaper production of such laser systems, especially once the tedious and currently completely manual mirror alignment procedure is automated. In addition, it raises the prospect of producing other types of optics including splitters and guides in a similar manner.

Mosquito Laser Death Grid Is Just What It Sounds Like

September 22, 2023 by Lewin Day 37 Comments

Mosquitoes suck. Quite literally. [Allen Pan] lives in an area where they’re so thick in the air, regular methods of killing them fail to put a dent in their numbers. Thus, he set about building a solution so dangerous we wouldn’t want to be within a mile when it’s turned on.

[Allen] was inspired by a TED talk from over a decade ago that involved targeting flying mosquitoes with high-powered scanning lasers. This technology never really came to fruition, and raised many questions about laser safety and effectiveness.

Testing the idea with only two mirrors installed.

This solution keeps the lasers, but goes a slightly different route — two 10-watt lasers bounced between multiple mirrors to create a laser death grid. It goes without saying that 10 watt lasers will blind you near instantly even at great range, and can burn skin and cause all manner of other horrors. Bouncing them around with mirrors and waving them about at mosquitoes is a really poor idea when even incidental exposure can do real harm.

Indeed, the laser is so powerful that it burns holes in the mirrors [Allen] used in early testing. It was around this time that [styropyro] was brought in to help ensure everyone involved got through the project with their eyesight intact.

[Allen]’s crew wears laser safety goggles when operating the horrifying handheld device, which mitigates some risk. The team also quickly notice beams escaping from various directions, due in part to the holes burned in their clothes. Electing to wrap the device in a heatproof blanket to avoid accidentally dazzling any nearby pilots was an obvious idea but turning the device off and destroying it would have been smarter.

Sadly, despite looking like the coolest cyberpunk weapon we’ve seen in years, the device doesn’t even kill mosquitoes very effectively. The bugs largely avoided the device, and only a few that flew directly into a beam ended up being cooked. The whole time watching the video, we feared someone dropping the rig, leading to a 10-watt beam bouncing off and striking some poor innocent bystander.

Powerful lasers are cool and useful things. Try and use them responsibly.

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