We're pretty proud of our book, "Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels", especially with reviews like this!
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.
We're pretty proud of our book, "Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels", especially with reviews like this!
Before we jump to the new product announcements, we need to tell you that we will be closed on Monday August 3rd (wait, what, it's already August?!) to celebrate something called a National One of the Many Long Weekends Day - I mean Heritage Day. We will resume our regular activities of answering phones and […]
Every year a group of my friends have an engineering Secret Santa. The rules are simple: make something cool for under $20 that requires engineering to complete. In years past we’ve seen Google cardboard VR headsets that are 6DOF, match stick rockets, 3D printed fans that explode when used, 3D printed rockets with cardboard launch […]
We will be so emotionally moved by the celebration of GPS Day tomorrow (the 14th) that we'll be taking Monday, February 16th off to recuperate. Go ahead and place orders or send emails - we'll get right back to you and continue shipping on Tuesday when we resume all business as usual. If you want […]
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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.