Well, my stint as Makezine's Soldering Makecation councellor is over. Last thing to do is go over the entries and pick some winners. See them here!
We laser lots of wood and acrylic... like seriously, it's hundreds if not thousands of sheets per year. This volume of throughput tends to cause the lasers to build up a lot of gunk and debris that needs to be cleaned on a regular basis. Besides being safer, it reduces the "flash" marks which are little black marks on the bottom of the material where the laser has burned through the material and reflected off the support table back to the underside of what was being cut.
Selecting the best surface used to support your lasered material comes down to a few options to which you need to ask:
We've used all four methods at Solarbotics (five, if you include the rotary attachment for engraving ...pop bottles), with the honeycomb being the often used solution, but after our last laser cleanup, we've revisited the slat system.
Our latest designs are larger and better tabbed so they stay together. The slat system is ideal for these jobs, with its better managing of debris build-up, and vastly reduced flashing. Less support material below the cut means there's less to get in the way. For comparison, this is what a traditional honeycomb table looks like after a few months of cutting MDF (ug!). Look at that old and crufty thing... and the honeycomb too.
Now take a look at our new cleaned and re-slatted table! It's almost too clean...
As nice as it is, this bed of slats has no indexable edge for us to register our material against. Finding a common origin point on the bed crucial in production, so we used the laser to create our own registration edge!
Using the laser to laser parts for the laser... for better lasering...
Here are the results:
With this in place, we're ready for even higher quality laser cutting.
Well, my stint as Makezine's Soldering Makecation councellor is over. Last thing to do is go over the entries and pick some winners. See them here!
Here's a collection of pictures and videos I shot on my trip to RoboMaxx II in Grants Pass, Oregon. I had a good time. Come and see what I saw!
Not just another *uino clone, as this uses a 32-bit Atmel AT91SAM7X ARM microcontroller. Sure, it uses the same form factor (well, except for the breadboard-friendly mini version), but the Netduino uses the .NET micro framework. What's that mean? Well, you're using a hugely more capable microcontroller (8-bit vs 32 bit), with much more memory […]
Ok, more like The Northern light. There's only one, but it creates lots of light! We made the SB-Firefly as a ATtiny85-based blinky light / "chewing-gum & duct-tape problem solver", that is also Digispark compatible. We made the Star Controller 3-watt RGB LED kit as an easy way to tame bright and power-hungry LEDs. We […]
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Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.