Laser Spirograph Exhibit Repair And Upgrade

February 20, 2012 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Bill Porter] continues finding ways to help out at the local museum. This time he’s plying his skills to fix a twenty-year-old exhibit that has been broken for some time. It’s a laser spirograph which had some parts way past their life expectancy.

He started by removing all of the electronics from the cabinet for further study in his lair. He examined the signal generator which when scoped seemed to be putting out some very nice sine waves as it should. From there he moved on to the galvos which tested way off of spec and turned out to be the offending elements.

A bit of searching around the interwebs and [Bill] figured out an upgrade plan for the older parts. But since he was at it, why not add some features at the same time? He rolled in a port so that just a bit of additional circuitry added later will allow shapes and logos to be drawn on the screen. One of his inspirations for this functionality came from another DIY laser projector project.

Take a look at the results of the repair process in the clip after the break.

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Let There Be Light Inside Your Epilog Laser Cutter

February 14, 2012 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

[Bradley Gawthrop’s] biggest gripe about his laser cutter is the lack of Mac support. We don’t think we’d have any gripes if we owned one of these (yeah, that’s a lie…) but we can understand his second biggest issue which is the inability to see the work piece once it’s inside the machine. He figured out a very easy way to light the area as the cutter gets to work.

It occured to him that the optical head is always directly above the part of the work piece he was interested in seeing. He had been using a flashlight to shed some light, but what if he just added lighting to that head? The circuit is certainly nothing hard; some LEDs, resistors and a power source will do the trick. But routing the power is where things get more difficult. You need flexible wiring strung just right so as not to restrict motion on the X/Y axes. Most of his time was spent routing some 14 gauge stranded speaker wire for this task. He added his own 5V DC supply to power the adhesive LED strip which enjoys a resting place on the bottom rail of the head unit. Boom, problem solved.

Just In Case You Didn’t Know How Awesome Laser Cutters Really Are

January 16, 2012 by Mike Szczys 39 Comments

[Alex] got his hands on an Epiloge laser cutter the easy way — the company he works for bought one. We’re sure he’s not trying to rub it in, but he really does make the tool look and sound cool in the post he wrote purely to show off the new ~~toy~~ hardware.

This model is a CO2 laser and it’s capable of etching and cutting a variety of materials. It does so with a 1200 DPI resolution at 0.005 pitch. The samples of engraved text and images show the clean lines and shapes this type of accuracy can achieve. The most stunning example is a piece of anodized aluminum which ends up showing some fantastic contrast that would make perfect face plates for project enclosures. Then there’s the cutting feature which is responsible for the gear demo seen above. We were surprised to hear that it will cut through acrylic but not polycarbonate.

After the break we’ve embedded [Alex’s] video. The camera is focused on the cutter as it engraves some lettering, then cuts out a gear. During the process he discusses what he’s learned about the device, sharing some interesting tidbits along the way.

We’re hoping to see some cool stuff like this from [Grenadier] who recently won a similar 40 Watt CO2 laser from Full Spectrum.

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More Laser Shooting Range Goodness; Now With Duckies

January 11, 2012 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

Here’s another project that reminds us of the shooting games at a carnival. This was actually inspired by the video game Duck Hunt, and was undertaken as a class project between four students at San Jose State University. It uses moving glass targets that look like rubber duckies. The player shoot sensors at their base with a laser-tipped gun. A direct hit is indicated by the duck glowing blue.

[Lananh Nguyen] is a Business Marketing major, but he’s also minoring in Studio Art and has been blowing glass for years. We think he’ll always have a side job making and selling glass because those ducks look fantastic. [Michael] and [Chris] worked together, building out the oscillating platform which moves the targets back and forth, as well as wiring up light sensors to the Arduino. A green laser diode was added to an acrylic gun to complete the project. Check out the game play video after the break to see how it all comes together.

If you missed the other laser shooting range when we featured it last week, you’ll want to revisit that project which uses tin cans as targets.

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Laser Shooting Gallery Made From Scrap

January 3, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

When he’s not being completely awesome hosting a radio show on electronic music, [Gaston Klares] is busy in his workshop coming up with some awesome stuff. One of his most recent builds is a laser gun shooting gallery that brings a classic carnival game to his back yard. (Google translate link)

The laser gun itself is made up of 95% recycled components. The purpose of the laser gun is pretty simple – just make a sound effect and fire a laser downrange when the trigger is pulled. The shooting gallery is where all the fun happens. Five dog food cans are lined up at the far end of the range. There’s a small hole in each can and a phototransistor inside each can that activates the ‘fall over’ mechanism. When all the cans are knocked down, a windshield wiper motor puts all the cans upright again.

Thanks to [Kris] for sending this one in. Check out the shooting gallery in action after the break.

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Full Color Laser TV

December 31, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

Back in 2001, [Helmar] made an awesome monochrome video display out of a red laser pointer and a spinning 18-sided mirror. Blue and green lasers are much less expensive than they were a decade ago, so [Helmar] decided to go full color with his laser projector. (In German, so fire up Chrome or get the Google translation)

The ancient website for [Helmar]’s green-only projector goes over the principles of operation. A single laser shines onto a multi-faceted polygonal mirror. This is reflected onto another mirror that provides the reflection for each line in a frame of video. Earlier this year, [Helmar] hacked up a red and blue laser to complement the preexisting green laser. The end result is an RGB projector powered by friggin’ lasers.

As far as we can tell, the projector only has composite input; the attached DVD player provides all the signaling for that. Amazingly, [Helmar] didn’t use a microcontroller for the circuitry. All the electronics are simple logic gates. Really amazing if you ask us.

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Cheap DIY Laser Scanner Is Quite Impressive

December 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 28 Comments

With the introduction of the Kinect, obtaining a 3D representation of a room or object became a much easier task than it had been in the past. If you lack the necessary cash for one however, you have to get creative. Both the techniques and technologies behind 3D scanning are somewhat complicated, though certainly still within reach as maker [Shikai Chen] shows us. (Google Translation)

He wanted to create 3D scanned images, but he didn’t have the resources to purchase a Kinect. Instead, he built his own scanner for about 1/6th the cost. Interestingly enough, the scanner resembles what you might imagine a very early Kinect prototype looked like, though it functions just a little bit differently than Microsoft’s creation. The scanner lacks any sort of IR emitter/camera combo, opting to use a laser and a USB VGA camera instead. While scanning, the laser shines across the target surface, and the reflected light is then picked up by the camera.

So how does this $25 DIY laser scanner measure up? Great, to be honest. Check out the video below to see how well his scanner works, and be sure to take a look through his second writeup (Google Translation) as well for more details on the project.

[via Seeedstudio]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLZ-s9KRzG8&feature=player_embedded&w=470]