3D-printable Laser Cutter

September 20, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

[peter] send in a reprappable laser cutter that he’s been working on. Even though he’s still having some problems with the accuracy of the beam over the entire square meter bed, it’s still an amazing build.

The build started off with a bunch of t-slot aluminum extrusions. After taking delivery of an absurdly large package containing a CO2 laser tube, [peter] started working on attaching motors to the axes. The optics travel the solid rods on pillow block bearings driven by the age-old stepper motor & timing belt drive.

The 1-square-meter of cut area on this machine is enormous for a homebrew laser cutter. [peter] discovered that once the necessary components are in place, it’s really how much aluminum you’d like to buy that becomes the limiting factor for the cut area. [peter] put the files for the 3D-printed carriages, brackets and mounts up on Thingiverse in the hopes his design can be improved by others.

Laser Light Show Comes To Life From The Junk Bin

September 20, 2011 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

In a project that only spanned about three weeks [Lars] built this laser light show projector using parts scavenged from his junk bin. We’ve seen the concept many times before, all you need is a laser source and two mirrors mounted on a spinning bases. The laser diode for this project was pulled from a recordable DVD player. That beam passes through the optics from a laser printer to give it the focus necessary to get a good projected image.

[Lars] played around with the mirror angles until he achieved just the right look. The first mirror is mounted about 4 degrees from being flat with its motorized base; the second is off by about 6 degrees. This introduces slight oscillation in the beam direction when the motors are spinning. By adjusting the speed of each motor you get different patterns. Adjustments are happening completely at random thanks to the BasicStamp2 microcontroller which hadn’t been used in years. Fifteen lines of code were all it took.

Want a laser that’s not controlled at random? Check out this addressable galvanometer-based show.

A Laser Cutter Challenge

September 14, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

When the Louisville hackerspace LVL1 was discussing the purchase of a new laser cutter, a member said, “I could build one before you get around to buying one.” The gauntlet was thrown down, a challenge was set, and the race was on to build a tiny laser cutter before the hackerspace took delivery of their new laser cutter.

The mechanical aspect of the build is fairly simple. The X axis is simply a stepper motor, threaded rod and laser module mounted on a carriage. This carriage moves along the Y axis with the help of two stepper motors for either side. Everything was mounted on more perfboard than reason would suggest.

For the electronics of the project, three motor drivers were made with a few logic chips and the laser firing relay was stolen from test equipment developed for LVL1’s trans-Atlantic balloon build. Motor and laser control was handled by an Arduino to keep the build simple because the contest was over after the first laser was finished cutting a square.

LVL1 is now working on a second version of the winner of the laser cutter challenge. They’re planning on a touchscreen interface that will cut a plastic blank about the size of a credit card. We can’t wait to see the results of that build.

Digging Deep Into The Neato’s LIDAR Module

September 12, 2011 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

[Hash] is going to great lengths to learn about the parts used in his Neato XV-11 LIDAR (dead link; Internet Archive). We looked in on his work with the XV-11 platform recently, where he used the dust bin of the vacuum as a modular hardware housing. This hack is a hardware exploration aimed at figuring out how an equivalent open hardware version can be built.

The LIDAR module is made of two big chunks; the laser and optic assembly, and the sensor board seen above. [Hash] put it under the microscope for a better look at the line scan imager. The magnification helped him find the company name on the die, this particular part is manufactured by Panavision. He figured out the actual model by counting the bonding wires and pixels in between them to get a pretty good guess at the resolution. He’s pretty sure it’s a DLIS-2K and links to an app note and the datasheet in his post. The chip to the right of the sensor is a TI digital signal processor.

Putting it back together may prove difficult because it will be impossible to realign the optics exactly as they were–the module will need to be recalibrated. [Hash] plans to investigate how the calibration routines work and he’ll post anything that he finds. Check out his description of the tear down in the video after the break.

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Laser Trip Wire In An Easy-to-use Form Factor

September 11, 2011 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

[Rul] built a nice laser trip wire alarm for use in Airsoft matches. Just place the enclosure so that the beam crosses a doorway and it will sound an alarm when the beam is broken. The only problem with this setup is that you need a reflective surface on the opposite side that can be positioned to direct the beam of light back to a photoresistor. But wait, there’s a second option. [Rul] also added a leaf switch that can be connected to an actual trip wire instead of using the laser.

A PIC 16F688 controls the laser module and monitors the photoresistor and leaf switch. When power is first switched on the box goes into a setup mode where it waits until the laser is detected by the photoresistor, switching on an LED to signal that you’ve got the beam aimed correctly. One press of the push-button puts it in activate mode which will sound the hacked window-alarm inside when the beam is broken. A toggle switch lets the operator chose between laser or wire operation.

You certainly won’t miss the alarm when it’s set off. Watch it scare the life out of a poor house cat in the clip after the break.

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Laser Etched PCB Production

September 9, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 42 Comments

Like most of us, [reonarudo] isn’t satisfied with the current methods of homebrew PCBs, so he put a laser on a reprap and started burning some boards.

The basic procedure is to cover a copper clad board with matte black spray paint. A laser was installed on the X carriage of the reprap. [reonarudo] used cad.py to convert the board files into g-code and fired up his laser. The quality of the boards is highly dependent on the accuracy of the laser so after working through some mechanical problems [reonarudo] managed to make some passable boards.

We’ve seen just about every manufacturing method imaginable applied to PCB production. Etch resist and toner transfer do the job and a reprap milling machine is pretty neat, but lasers are so much cooler. While it may not be perfect (yet), printing PCBs with a laser shows a lot of potential. Check out a video of [reonarudo]’s bot burning some copper after the break.

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Incredible 1000 MW Iron Man Repulsor Beam

July 14, 2011 by Mike Nathan 55 Comments

awesome_hand_mounted_repulsor_laser

German lab technician by day, hacker by night [Patrick Priebe] has done it again, this time strapping a ridiculously high-powered laser to the palm of his hand. Earlier this year, we showed you an awesome Neodymium:YAG pulse laser pistol he built, and it seems he never takes a rest from constructing crazy laser projects.

[Patrick] is a huge Iron Man fan, and his palm-mounted laser unit was built as an ode to his all-time favorite super hero. Crafted to invoke images of Iron Man’s repulsor beam, his laser uses a 1000 mw 445 nm laser diode to get the job done. if you happen to be keeping track, that makes his DIY laser just as powerful as the WickedLasers Spyder 3 Arctic – THE benchmark in portable handheld lasers.

Like his previous builds, we can’t seem to find a whole lot of information about the laser’s construction process. We do know however, that the unit was crafted from a 2mm thick sheet of brass, which fits nicely on his hand while simultaneously acting as a very large heat sink. This large surface area allows him to run the laser continuously for three minutes before requiring a cool down, which is no small feat.

We think it’s an awesome project, and as you can see by the videos of the three separate revisions it has undergone, [Patrick] is quite serious when it comes to perfecting his wares.

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