Category Archives: Laser

Advent Calendar for 2021

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Switzerland got a snow cover, with more snow coming the next days. December started, and so did the Advent season. Similar to last year, we wanted to create a special advent calendar, which is then is given to families in the neighborhood who deserve it, because they did so much for our community this year.

Last year it was a special house created mostly with a laser cutter. This year I took advantage of having a desktop CNC down in the basement. The result is a ‘tree’ filled with small boxes made of oak wood:

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Mobile Teacher Tool, Rev 2 by Gerhard

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It is always great to see if someone is picking up my work and produces something even better :-). In this case, Gerhard Székely took my DIY Portable Video Conference, Sharing and Teaching Device and created an awesome version of it:

Camera to the front

Camera to the front

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Behind the Canvas: Making of “60 Billion Lights”

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As promised I’m going to share more details about the “60 Billion Lights” project. It is about a project to build a piece of electronics behind a 100×50 cm canvas to show animations or to display information like temperature, humidity, weather, time or just any arbitrary text.

Make it

Writing text

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DIY ‘Meta Clock’ with 24 Analog Clocks

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Human since 1982 claims

“Human since 1982 have the copyright to works displaying digital time using a grid arrangement of analog clocks…”

I’m not a lawyer, but without obligations (imho) I have removed the content.

You can read more of the details here: Copyright Law for Makers and Educators

Thanks for understanding,

Erich

World Stepper Clock with NXP LPC845

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I really love clocks. I think this is I am living here in Switzerland. Beside of that: clock projects are just fun :-). After I have completed a single clock using stepper motors (see “DIY Stepper Motor Clock with NXP LPC845-BRK“), I wanted to build a special one which is able to show up to four different time zones: Below an example with London (UK), New York (USA), Beijing (China) and Lucerne (Switzerland):

Stepper Clock

Stepper Clock

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Replacing a cheap Chinese CO2 Laser Tube

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What is the life span of a cheap Chinese CO2 laser tube? I mean: how long can I use one these (aka K40) laser engraver/cutter tubes as used in that 50W machine I have? I have used my machine for over a year for now, and I don’t have hour meter, but I estimate it have used it for about 500 hours. I don’t have a data sheet of the tube used inside my machine. Discussions on the internet estimate the live span from DOA (Dead On Arrival) to ‘a few months with moderate usage’ up to 3000-5000h’. Well, whatever it would be: my laser cutter stopped working two weeks ago. Here is how I got it back operating again….

New Laser Tube on the Bench

New Laser Tube on the Bench

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Lasercut Plywood Board for Raspberry Pi

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Need a quick way how to attach a LED, a push button and two resistors to the Raspberry Pi header? One way is to use some ‘flying’ wires. Or to use three pieces of lasercut plywood for a nice looking Raspy extension board:

Wood Board on Raspberry Pi

Wood Circuit Board on Raspberry Pi

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Sneak Preview: DIY SMT Pick & Place Machine with OpenPnP

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I apologize: I have not been blogging much in the past weeks :-(. One reason is that I’m working on a DIY SMT/SMD Pick&Place machine which keeps me busy most of my spare time :-). I admit that this project is not finished yet, but now is the time I can give a sneak preview: a SMD/SMT pick and place machine:

Pick&Place Machine

Pick&Place Machine

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Upgrading a Laser Cutter with Cohesion3D Mini and LCD

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I’m very happy with my 50W Laser Cutter (see “Getting Control over a 50 Watt CO2 Laser Cutter from China“). My main decision factors were (and still are): Software, software, tools and again software, and down in the list finally the hardware. Same thing for that laser cutter. After several upgrades (see “50W Laser Cutter Upgrades“), it was time replace the stock controller hardware with a new one including LCD display:

New Laser Cutter LCD Panel

New Laser Cutter LCD Panel

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