CNC

…a guest Post – Greg Weber on the Trotec Laser Cutter/Engraver

April 9, 2013

I’ve recently been talking with Greg Weber – the owner of a Trotec Speedy 300 laser machine. He offered to make a posting on the blog about some of the projects he’s been working on… Hi, my name is Greg and I’m the owner of a Trotec Speedy 300 laser machine. I love to work [...]

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…a Goatskin drum (Bodhrán)

March 4, 2013

Ever since I saw Mike Oldfield remix the Blue Peter theme back in the 80′s I was fascinated with the strange looking drum be played half way through… It was only recently that I found out it was called a ‘Bodhrán’ [Bo-rawn] (which I’m told might mean ‘deaf’ but that was probably a joke, or [...]

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…a new CO2 Laser cutter / engraver.

November 26, 2012

Wow, been a long time since I posted about anything. I thought it was about time I wrote about something new. I recently acquired all the parts for a laser cutter – although I was running an 80W tube from the BlackToe gantry I found that the two machining techniques were at odds with each [...]

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…Fritz Lang’s Theremin Stand

November 6, 2011

(Sounds like something you’d find in Warehouse 13) For many weeks I’ve been trying to come up with a cabinet design for the vacuüm tube Theremin I built a while ago. I decided that the electronics were far too marvelous to hide away in the classic RCA “drinks cabinet” – and that something more radical [...]

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DIY CO2 Laser Cutter – more test cuts…

October 11, 2011

I re-aligned the bounce mirrors, added an air-assist, and did some test cuts on acrylic, plywood and hardwood. Slowing the feedrate seems more effective than increasing the power. Need to spend some time with different materials, figuring out the cut parameters for each one. Oooh shiny!

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…making some initial cuts with the CO2 Laser

October 4, 2011

Yes! Finally, after several iterations we have the installed, aligned and focused CO2 laser wreaking some serious havoc on a piece of MDO. There are still many tests to run and various safety mechanisms to install, but the system works, and is aligned over a 24″ x 24″ area (at least). I can think of [...]

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…installing the laser tube

September 28, 2011

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth I finally got the tube installed in its new home. However I’ve now realized that it’s 4″ too short and I need to build a new base and position it correctly . Still, I hooked up the cooling system, and thankfully there are no leaks – I gave [...]

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…building my Destructor(tm) beam

September 25, 2011

More progress in the laser/CNC saga. I built a cage from steel and MDO for the laser tube – fits really nicely. Next step is to add the first bounce mirror which will turn the beam straight up – into a PVC tube attached with plumbing flanges (The sales assistant at Menard’s asked me what [...]

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Laser Cutter 2.0 : That is one big *ss tube…

September 10, 2011

Good news! The laser tube, power supply and cooling system arrived yesterday. The 80W tube is *MASSIVE* – even though I knew the dimensions before I ordered it, I guess my subconscious had chosen to ignore the fact of exactly how long this thing was going to be. Hmmmm… I might have to move my [...]

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…an update to the laser cutter / mill saga

August 30, 2011

It turns out that the laser tube I have will not work with the generic PSU units on E-bay. Not entirely sure why this is, but I did notice that the insulation on the tube is starting to *melt* so maybe it’s time to move on. So… it looks like my only option right now [...]

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