Homebuilt laser cutter pictures

I'm also impressed by this setup. A better question : how many hours did it take ?

Rene

very nice, some info about the hardware/software would be appeciated

martin

After the first death, there is no other. (Dylan Thomas)

Hi all,

We have built a computer controlled C02 laser for cutting and engraving.

Thought some of you may be interested to have a look.

Any comments are welcome.

Cheers, Tony

Hi Martin, thanks. I'm going to put up more technical details on the website. I just thought that initially I would put up as many photos as possible, showing most of the details. I constructed the drive electronics for the stepper motors using bipolar transistors and a CPLD board for the step & direction decoding. I'm using Danplot software, which outputs signals to the parallel port, but other CAM software (such as MaxNC) that outputs signals to the parallel port can also be used. To turn the laser on and off, I currently have a microswitch attached to a stepper motor, which is the Z-axis motor. I will be changing this to a pulse width modulated or delta-sigma signal to the laser, for variable power. Cheers, Tony