CMU School of Drama


Friday, January 24, 2014

axCut: An Open Source Laser Cutter

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:

Unknown said...

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.

Unknown said...

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.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Akiva said...

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.

Unknown said...

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.

Unknown said...

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.