Laser Hacks

622 Articles

Vector Plotter With Lasers

August 21, 2010 by 13 Comments

[Hubert] sent in his experiments using HDDs, CDROMs, speakers, and other components to make an XY laser plotter. Those carefully reading will note, its not all three to make one plotter, but rather three plotters each using a separate system. The setups have their advantages and disadvantages, and [Hubert] is sure to point them out; including circuit diagrams and pictures to help you on your own trials.

There is a little difficulty in reading English not so good, but considering we’ve never seen a single-laser vector plotter done before (spirographs come close, and no one wants to wait 85 seconds) it’s still very impressive.

[Thanks TJ]

Laser Microscope Projection

August 21, 2010 by 35 Comments

looks totally safe to me

Ok, we’ll start this off by saying, looking at lasers can damage your eyes. Be careful. Now that we’ve got that absolutely clear, we couldn’t help but find this super quick and dirty laser microscope fascinating. Basically, they are just pointing a laser through a drop of water suspended from the tip of a syringe. The image of the contents of the drop are projected on a nearby wall. The drop seen in the video after the break was taken from a potted plant and you can see all kinds of life squirming around in there. Just don’t try it with this laser.

[via HackedGadgets]

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1W Blue Laser – Remarkably Easy And Dangerous

August 20, 2010 by 92 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE3F7vjYx4U]

We’ve been covering Laser Hacks pretty much since the beginning but it’s surprising to see the niche market that has sprouted up around building powerful handheld modules. [Styropyro] filmed the video above as a tutorial on building a 1W blue laser. The “flashlight” that he starts with includes a heat sink intended for a laser diode. It seems there’s a lot of choices when choosing one of these build kits. A one Watt blue laser diode is press fit into the heat sink and wired in place. The body of the device receives a boost converter to get the batteries up to 1A, and once the assembly is complete the burning begins. It lights candles, matches, and pops balloons; the normal laser demo goodies.

So it’s a pretty easy build. But it’s also easy for someone being careless to damage their eyes. As [Styropyro] mentions in his comments, just looking at the dot created by the laser will damage your sight.

Negative Laser Etching

August 17, 2010 by 23 Comments

[James] has been refining a method of negatively etching metal with a laser. He had been using a product called Thermark which is designed for this process, but it’s quite expensive. He found that paint designed for wood stoves works just as well. To prepare the surface he bead blasted it and then cleaned of the residue and finger prints off with acetone. The board was preheated in an oven before covering it with the spray paint. He ran the laser at 98/100 power and 90/400 speed at a step size of 0.1mm to achieve the results above. This should immediately make you think about making circuit boards. We’d love to ditch the toner transfer and we’re always looking for one more reason to get a laser cutter.

Coded Safety For Diy Laser

July 2, 2010 by 16 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yVtJia5UWY]

Finally we see a hack that is focuses on safety when it comes to high-power laser hacks. A safety switch has been added to the butt of the flashlight body which houses the laser diode. When the safety is flipped on an LED blinks to prompt the user for a security code. If you enter the correct code on a momentary push switch, electrical access to the laser is enabled. There are also a couple of nice features such as continuous on and auto shutoff.

This would be hard to implement if you’re working on a watertight package but we like the fact that an unsuspecting house guest won’t go blind if searching for a flashlight during a storm. One last thing, the code entry system is PIC based which reminds us of [Alan Parekh’s] one-button system.

Laser Command Game Uses Laser For Control

May 4, 2010 by 31 Comments

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/10819322]

[Eliji Hayashi’s] project for a class at Carnegie Mellon University is absolutely delightful! It is a game he calls Laser Command because a laser pointer is used as the gaming controller. An 8×8 LED matrix serves as the display, but is also used as an 8×8 light sensor, much the same way as the LED advent project did. The display is rapidly switched between producing light and sensing it. The laser is bright enough that it becomes easy to pick up the voltage generated within the matrix during the sensing periods. The game is programmed on an Arduino mini and the whole thing wraps up into an incredibly small package. Brilliant.

[Thanks Juan]