hackaday.com: If you’ve always wanted a laser cutter and you have £1500 lying around (approx. $2500 as of today) — and you have access to a 3D printer — then you’ll want to take a look at [Damian's] open source laser cutter: axCut. The project has evolved over the last few months from some mockups in OpenSCAD to a working prototype.
6 comments:
A home built laser cutter? exciting! I however am not looking forward to either they stories of people burning there houses down, or cutting a knife out of hard plastic and stabbing someone, much like the people that are currently trying to 3D print guns. I would love to build one just the for the experience of making one.
I've always told myself that when I get a house with a garage and extra money coming in (fingers crossed) that I would build my own laser cutter/cnc router hybrid. It definitely seems easy to do especially with the countless guides you can find online. My only question is why he chose to settle for a 40W laser rather than an 80W. If you're going to build something like this you might as well go big or go home.
I really like the idea of being able to have an open source option for building a laser cutter. I don't think that I would ever really want to build my own laser cutter, but I like that the info about how to do it is out there in the open so that if I ever want to build something based off of that tech I won't have to re-invent the wheel. I'd like to point out to Chris that if someone wanted to stab someone then they could use a normal knife... I think that a lot of people are scared by the idea of people being about to build what they want with out the permission of a corporation that can sell them the item. Realistically CNC tech isn't allowing people to make things that they couldn't make before, it's just making it much easier.
I checked out the MicroSlice that they article linked to. I think that the MicroSlice is even cooler then the axCut. A tiny simple laser engraver that anyone can run is much more interesting to me then a full sized complex system like the axCut. But maybe that just speaks to me personally more.
It's interesting that this is possible, but I think that anybody who has access to the resources required to build this machine likely has access to the resources to simply buy a better one. Unlike a bookshelf or a cup holder, a home made laser cutter will likely be inferior to a purchases one.
A home brew laser cutter?! That seems like a good recipe for fire damage.. Don't get me wrong, the idea seems cool, and I suppose the price can't be beat, but the implementation seems a little "rough" at best. I wonder what the cost/benefit analysis would be of signing up to be a member at an organization like Techshop and accessing industrial tools that way as opposed to hacking them together yourself.
Although I suppose if nothing else, it probably would be a lot of fun to try build your own laser cutter.
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