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A Maker Space Favorite: Using a Laser Cutter (Video)
Slashdot editor Jeff Boehm visted Maker Works in Ann Arbor, MI, where they not only have an Epilog Helix Laser Cutter/Engraver, but let him use it. Which, of course, he happily did, just as you or I would have done if somebody said, "Here. Borrow my laser cutter and engraving machine." The sound in the video is a little rough, since it was recorded live in a room full of loud machines -- like laser cutters. But it's still fascinating to watch (and hear) the process. The only downside is the "Ooh! I want one of those!" effect. There are used units available out there, but they cost as much as a pretty good used car. Maybe that's why there are so many Maker Spaces, also called Hacker Spaces, out there. Here's a global Hacker Space list. Hopefully, you'll find one near you, so you can do a little laser cutting (and lots of other neat stuff) yourself.
Note: Slashdot accepts reader video submissions. Email robin at roblimo dot com for details.
All the TechShops have laser cutters. They are very popular. Once you have access to a laser cutter, every problem starts looking like it can be solved by dicing up something thin and flat. That's not quite true, but acrylic and hardwood plywood both cut very nicely and can build some great things. The nice thing about laser cutters is there are zero fixturing problems -- just lay the material on the cutting bed and start the cutting program. You get exquisitely straight cuts and sub-millimeter precision, so assembly and glue up go very smoothly without any fiddling.
Commercial laser cutters are pricey. Here is an open source cutter project that I have been watching, I'll probably build one of these when my current cutter craps out:
http://labs.nortd.com/lasersaur/
(I have an ancient laser cutter that is no longer support by the manufacturer -- when the tube goes, it's a paperweight, so I'm always looking for good options for when the fatal day arrives.)
Goldfinger approves it too
Agree, like all tools.
:-)
Have you seen the latest water jet cutters yet? Just as fast, if not faster, than the laser, but with pre-de-burred edges
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I got you: In the video he uses a laser cutter.
A laser cutter involved a laser strong enough to cut through metal. (Duh.) So what do you use to stop the laser once it goes through whatever you're trying to cut/drill? I presume there must be something at the other end designed to defocus and/or safely absorb the energy from the laser, i'm just curious what the exact method is.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I had to replace the lasing cavity on a 150W CO2 Epilog Laser Cutter/Engraver. Seems this was an early model with no interlocks between the Laser and the chilling system. So one day our engraving guy forgot to turn on the chiller when he fired up a job on the Epilog. And poof! There went the lasing cavity.
Pretty easy to replace I might add. It's almost as though Epilog EXPECTED stupidity.
Laser cutters are soooo amaaaazing. All the cool kids have laser cutters now.
With a laser cutter you can burn patterns out of plywood and assemble them. If you have a laser cutter you can even do advanced things like box joints.
If you don't have a laser cutter and want to put your arduino in a plywood box, you have to order the cut plywood from a place that has a laser cutter.
</sarcasm>
littlebigbot pretty much sums it right up, but here you go anyway.
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Title: A Laser Cutter Demo
Description: Slashdot editor Jeff Boehm visited Maker Works in Ann Arbor, MI, where they not only have an Epilog Helix Laser Cutter & Engraver, but let him use it.
00:00 TITLE
Slashdot Editor Jeff Boehm, as identified by titles, is shown standing in a room next to a piece of machinery.
00:00 Jeff
Over the past several months we've run videos of various Maker Spaces around the country, and several readers brought to us the request for a more granular look at how to get involved in a Maker community.
To that end, I'm here at the MakerWorks at Ann Arbor, Michigan, to take a look at one of those ways.
00:16 TITLE
The view fades to the SlashdotTV title sequence reading "Using a Laser Cutter" before fading back out again to the view of Jeff Boehm.
00:22 Jeff
Standing next to me is the Epilog Laser Helix - it's a laser cutter and engraver, and it is one of the more interesting tools here at the MakerWorks.
This tool has several things going for it.
First, it can create a wide variety of very interesting designs on many types of materials, from metal to wood, paper, plastic - all sorts of things.
Two, it is very easy to learn and operate.
And three?
Lasers(!)
00:48 TITLE
The view fades to a shot of the top of the engraver/cutter with Jeff pointing out its major components.
00:48 Jeff
The device itself is fairly straight-forward.
You place the object you're cutting inside here, where the exhaust vent will create small suction, so for example paper won't blow away.
The laser itself is in this little unit right here.
It is automatically propelled on both the X and the Y axes by this large device.
The control panel, here, is for zeroing it out and various other things.
You send jobs to it much as you would a printer.
01:19 TITLE
The view changes to that of a computer screen with design software shown. Jeff interacts with its interface throughout this segment, working with a Star Wars/Rebel Alliance logo.
01:19 Jeff ... that looks about good.
Operating the software for this device is also very simple.
To begin, just download any image from the internet, and then import it into the software you're using - in this case, it is Corel Draw.
I think we're going to make a drink coaster out of this one, so let's resize this to something a little more manageable.
Now, if we were just engraving, we would be done right here.
But first we need to do one more step.
Since coasters are circular, we need to do a circular cut.
So I'll create a circle, tell it how wide and tall we want it to be, tell it where to center, and there - that looks like roughly the right shape.
I can go here and scrunch it down just a little bit to make sure it fits better
02:19 Jeff
We'll also tell it we want it to be a hairline cut, rather than a cut of a particular thickness.
This is what tells the device to actually do a cut.
If you tell it to do a thicker line, it will try to just engrave.
02:31 Jeff
Once that's done, we do pretty much what we do with a regular drawing that we're trying to print.
We go to the Print, and it will bring up a box saying that we're printing to the engraver, and we go to properties.
02:45 TITLE
The engraver's driver interface is shown with various engraving/cutting settings.
02:45 Jeff
This is where the engraver's driver comes in.
We'll tell it what kind of DPI we want.
This tells us whether we want to do "raster" or "vector" - that just means whether we want to engrave, or cut - since in this case we're doing both, we leave it on "combined".
Now, we need to determine exactly what laser settings we need to use.
03:07 TITLE
The view fades to a shot of a large chart with various materials and engraving/cutting properties in a table revealing recommended engraver/cutter settings.
03:08 Jeff
This job is m
We have one (AllHandsActive.com - Ann Arbor, MI). Ours works slightly differently than what you said. The knob on the front limits it. The software limits it further. When running if we set ours to 15MW (on the knob) and set 50% power in software we get ~7.5MW read out on the gauge during the run.
The software (RetinaEngrave) is pretty terrible. It does make multiple passes and splitting colors (different power/passes) easy, but alignment of raster and vector images is a pain. It also only seems to consistently open .XPS files and not any other file type you might commonly have. This means we have to open in another piece of software, print to XPS and load in RetinaEngrave to get a file we know works the way we expect. Not a huge deal but kind of annoying when we already have a vector image.
Good machine though. Works well otherwise.
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.