Laser practice

Once we got the kids to bed it was time to start making things with the laser. Two projects for tonight. 1st is getting some design updates completed for a plastic customer. Second is learning to use this laser effectively.



Lis did an awesome job of taking some pictures of a custom modified (like grinder and sand paper custom) part from samples we did for a customer and recreating the mods in the cad environment. That's for another blog post.

I played with the laser tonight.

First thing I did was make sure I can modulate the power with the laser drivers as I expected. I tested this on a piece of slate. I was also curious if 100% power from the laser could do anything super cool like make the slate explode. That test was inconclusive. 

vector graphic for the slate to be etched

I created this drawing where each color tells the laser what power to use when etching via color. For the human readers I also spelled out that color in English. I then used the laser in raster mode to etch those English words into my piece of slate.

Piece of slate being lasered

Results were good! Check out how deep the etching is on the 100! (Never mind that red color... We were playing with a pen for slate coloring) 

Next step was laser cut business cards from some card stock we have. This test also checked the ability of the laser to be gentle on something like paper. I created a simple graphic design and vector cut file and voila!

Laser in action cutting cards.

Obviously laser cut business cards aren't incredibly cost effective but it's part of the learning process.

Another fun fact learned tonight is I might have used a little too much power for the vector cutting. This was really obvious when I took out the cardboard backer I was doing the business cards on.

a 50W CO2 laser isn't supposed to be able to etch aluminum... but there is definitely an etch on that flat bed!

Stone, cardboard and paper... Check! 
Stay tuned for the next laser projects... Wood and then acrylic.