Category Archives: Laser

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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Using a Laser Cutter and Engraver with Cellulose Acetate Sheets

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I’m mostly using my 50W laser cutter machine with plywood, simply because that material is available and very inexpensive. I have used it cutting or engraving PMMA (Polymethyl methacrylate or ‘Plexiglas’), simply because that material is more expensive.

From a reader of this blog I received something to experiment with: Cellulose Acetate sheets. Time to experiment with something new 🙂

Washed off

Washed off

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WiFi OLED Mini Weather Station with ESP8266

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I’m convinced that this ‘Internet of Things’ thing-thing is not real. Pure marketing and buz words without any added value, right? The IoT hype is so bizar: it must be originated by aliens which have taken over the brains of all the Pointy-haired Bosses of the world? There is no useful application or use case out there!

But wait! There *is* actually good use case, at least for the geeks of this world. We all love clocks as we want to know the time, and we all love the weather forecast so we can plan accordingly. At least I usually do :-).

SQUIX ESP8266 Mini Weather Station

SQUIX ESP8266 Mini Weather Station

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Tuning a Laser Cutter and Determine the Maximum Usable Laser Power

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The question has been: If I buy such a 50 Watt cheap laser cutter from China, how many Watts does it really have? I have read all these stories that usually what is advertised is only the theoretical maximum I could get, and will not be realistic at all. This article is about how I tuned the machine and how much I got out of it.

Different Laser Power

Different Laser Power

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Laser Engraving for a Card Box

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We are creating a new course (PRG-G) at the Lucerne University. This course teaches C programming and is part of the new curriculum in EE (Electrical Engineering). Every student will receive a microcontroller board on an extension board as give-away, in a custom card box for the board and cable. To make things a bit more exciting, why not laser engrave that box? That gives me a perfect excuse to experiment with the laser cutter 🙂

Laser Engraved Card Box

Laser Engraved Card Box

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Getting Control over a 50 Watt CO2 Laser Cutter from China

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There are people around me who think I’m crazy. And they are probably right. Who else would buy a machine from someone he does not know. I have to pay upfront. It is not clear how things will get delivered, what gets delivered, or if it gets delivered at all. Up to the point I can lose the money I have spent. Best of all: that machine is dangerous enough to potentially kill me. And it has the potential to put my home on fire too. Well, that sounds like an exciting weekend project, or not?

Weekend Box

60 kg Weekend Project Box arrived on the front door

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