Laser cutter, Part V: air assist

[madbodger]

A worry with the laser cutter is fumes from the cutting condensing on the focussing lense, leading to all sorts of badness. Additionally, cutting materials like acrylic is improved by having an air stream to blow the melted plastic away. Accordingly, I decided to add air assist to the laser cutter. In short, this consists of adding a nozzle to

Comments

[madbodger]

It has been an exercise in yak shaving, having to put together the grinder to put together the mill to make parts to put together the laser cutter. It can cut cloth, paper, wood, and plastic nicely. And I plan on using all of these. Some things I sew involve some tricky cutting. But a laser can do a great job of precision cutting, like this wedding dress. I kind of wanted a Cricut to do papercraft and make stencils for airbrush body painting, but they only support DOS and I don't use DOS. But a laser can do anything a Cricut can do, and more. A friend posted recently about wanting laser cutting services. I can help with that. I want a replacement graticule for my oscilloscope, so I designed one. Also, I'll want custom engraved clear plastic doors for my element collection, and this will be a nice way to make them.

[randomdreams]

Last I checked (which was a while ago) Cricuts were *very* limited in what they can cut, and I haven't yet read of anyone hacking them to give arbitrary graphics ability. The business plan seems to be sell the cutter at a very low price and then charge per cut-design-module. If you know more I'd like to hear about it, since manintheboat could use one.
I've a 350mW laser diode + optics just waiting to go onto the Sherline...

[madbodger]

I have a pen plotter I'm not using that would work nicely with that laser diode. Want it?

[allartburns]

heya! I'm a long stone's throw away in Pittsburgh, also building a laser cutter (lasersaur #4, actually), and also looking at air assist! Looking forward to seeing how you manage the hose, I'm thinking of using spring reels and dynamic tension, but I'm not sure if my steppers are up to the extra load.

[madbodger]

I get out to Pittsburgh every so often (less now that I'm not working for a company headquartered here). At first, I'm just going to see if creative hose routing will be sufficient. If it's not, I'll end up slicing through some hose. At that point, I may play with threading it through a wire spring, which should provide much drag and will tend to keep it constrained. If that doesn't work, I may play with Dinosaur Duct or something really fancy like KabelSchlepp.