[hackerspaces] Lasersaur on kickstarter.com wants $10k to develop an open source laser cutter

[Jaap Vermaas]

Hi People,

We (Mobile Fab Lab NL & Spullenmannen) recently bought a China-made
laser cutter, 60W 30x50 cm for about 3000 euro.

The first thing we did was open it and make an inventory of the hardware
used in it. Our conclusion was that we could have build all parts
ourselves from off-the-shelve parts, except for the laser tube.

Since we plan to use it "mobile" (in a truck) being able to repair it
ourselves is essential. And there's no warranty on it anyway!

Building DIY Laser tubes is too complicated for most of us, i guess, so
we bought a spare, just to be sure. You can buy 60 Watt lasers in NL for
about 400-600 euros.

More interesting, all the electronics (stepper motor boards and main
board) look very standard and could be easily replaced by (for example)
the board from a Makerbot.

Our conclusion is that the biggest gap between laser cutting and open
source design (AOI, QCad, Inkscape) is the electronics and the driver.
It would be great to either hack the current mainboard so we can make a
Linux driver for it, or just replace the mainboard with something that
speaks Maker-bot/RepRap compatible GCODE allready. It doesn't look too
hard, but "time" is the limiting factor here.

So: yes, an open source laser cutter, please! And please focus on
electronics replacements and drivers!

Jaap


On 06/01/2010 03:08 PM, john arclight wrote:
> We will definitely check this out! For detailed information on making
> a dead-flat and straight set of ways from, well not straight
> components, I highly recommend studying the Gingery homemade lathe
> book, available here:
> 
> http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/series/index.html
> 
> Arclight
> 
> On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 9:39 PM, John Griessen <john at industromatic.com> wrote:
>> john arclight wrote:
>>>
>>> This sound interesting. Most importantly, I think we need a good,
>>> sturdy 3-axis gantry [...]all of the heavy-duty movements I've seen have
>>> involved one-off
>>> salvaged components[...]So I would encourage [...]an open design that
>>> could have
>>> multiple components bolted on.
>>
>> At the enDesign makerspace in Austin TX, we have a gantry that is a pseudo
>> copy
>> of a mechmate that uses V shaped ways and wheels.  One source is:
>> http://www.linearvguides.com/linearvguides/vguidewheels.htm
>> Not sure of prices, but these wheels and guides have been around for twenty
>> years at least
>> and are likely cheap.  The smallest wheel is good for 280 lbs down, 65 lbs
>> force sideways.
>>
>> The ways are mounted on a steel frame and can be trued up with washers.
>>  Getting
>> a steel frame built by welding, yet flat and square is a skill and design
>> problem.  Ours is undergoing mods to straighten weld warp by making opposing
>> welds.
>> That may be good and can be designed in also.  We still need a few pieces
>> for the Z axis
>> and they may get documented as pythonOCC 3D model code that can be shared.
>>
>> John