141–150 of 200 posts
Can you use this for 3d printin? Like in an array of lasers where every laser is a pixel and you get 3d by shifting a powder layer. Could this architecture be faster then current 3d printers?
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Given large scale laser cuts I've seen - they require less cleanup, but still some. You spatter molten metal everywhere.
I have a CNC plasma cutter which I use for making robots, and have also worked with laser cut metal. The laser cutter is so, so much more precise. On the plasma I cut some gear teeth with 5mm pitch and they’re okay for a coarse positioning system that doesn’t rotate continuously. On a laser you could cleanly cut 1mm pitch gears for continuous rotation I would think.
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Given how quickly dangerous these compact lasers can be, I think I'd rather stick with the handheld plasma cutter.
The quality of the cuts out of a plasma cutter are not great. I always have to spend some time cleaning them up after the fact. I'd hope laser cut parts are much better.
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Does the Netherlands have a law against knowingly buying stolen property?
The Netherlands famously has more bicycle thefts per year than citizens. At this point you could almost think of cheap commuter bikes as public property. People in countries where bicycling is not seen as a personality statement generally ride very cheap city bikes around town. Last time I bought one of those in college it cost about 30eur. Is not like in SF where people ride 3000 dollar bikes to work because omg you…
No, it definitely does not!
750k bike thefts for 17.7m people. So roughly one per 25 people...
It famously has more bicycles than people!
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CNC would be an obvious implementation. At the moment, there are expensive-but-affordable home CNC laser cutters, typically for a small number of thousand EUR/USD. The more powerful ones can do a very neat job cutting (up to a few mm of) plywood. There are also CNC plasma cutters, which do a good but slightly rough job of cutting sheet metal, and are relatuvely large and complex beasts. I guess a highly-powerful lase…
Bit of a tangent, but you might have better luck with hardwood vs. plywood. The glue in plywood makes it more difficult for CO2 lasers to cut through. I was super surprised when someone at work mentioned they were able to blow through some hardwood in a single pass but had a struggle to get through plywood.
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Bit of a tangent, but you might have better luck with hardwood vs. plywood. The glue in plywood makes it more difficult for CO2 lasers to cut through. I was super surprised when someone at work mentioned they were able to blow through some hardwood in a single pass but had a struggle to get through plywood.
Does the heating from the laser cause any softening of the glue/weakening/delamination of the layers?
I wonder if the surface emitting nature of these will make it easier to phase lock multiple chips. This could be very useful for large apertures and power beaming over long distances. One application for high efficiency large aperture lasers is powering long distance aircraft, either by beaming from ground stations along the way or from laser stations in space. The ability to forego fuel entirely would be quite attra…
>> make it easier to phase lock multiple chips Another use for that is holography. If you can make a wafer-scale array of phase locked emitters overlayed with the ability to either attenuate or phase-shift each one, it becomes a nice (one color) holographic display. I'm assuming high divergence from each one.
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The Netherlands famously has more bicycle thefts per year than citizens. At this point you could almost think of cheap commuter bikes as public property. People in countries where bicycling is not seen as a personality statement generally ride very cheap city bikes around town. Last time I bought one of those in college it cost about 30eur. Is not like in SF where people ride 3000 dollar bikes to work because omg you…
> The Netherlands famously has more bicycle thefts per year than citizens. No, it definitely does not! 750k bike thefts for 17.7m people. So roughly one per 25 people... It famously has more bicycles than people!
A society in which "the average car-buyer" has a tiny portable steel-melting laser is a society where I'm wearing welding goggles every time I leave the house. And I'm not sure how you even lock a bike or a door or a safe any more.
My bike is protected by Anti-Theft Aesthetics (tm).