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The article rightly points out the industrial impact of more powerful and compact lasers but I cannot wait for those PCSELs to reach the small workshop market. Having a cheap laser able to cut metal at home / small shops would be so useful (And sneakily dangerous as lasers are).
These seem safer. With a wide emission area and focusing lens, a reflected beam will weaken with distance.
The article rightly points out the industrial impact of more powerful and compact lasers but I cannot wait for those PCSELs to reach the small workshop market. Having a cheap laser able to cut metal at home / small shops would be so useful (And sneakily dangerous as lasers are).
Can you expand on why you think this would be so great for home workshops? How do you envision using the laser? Handheld, mounted, or on a CNC?
If it can cut metal, it'd probably not suffer much in the way of limitations on other materials... .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I moved to the Netherlands my boss told me to never spend more than 20 euro on a bike because it will get stolen. I didn't listen, and lo and behold two weeks in my 75 euro bike and the 35 euro heavy duty lock disappeared
I'm skeptical: * Where do you buy a ≤20 euro bike? * Most people on the street have bikes that look to be at least 200 euros new, from what I can tell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I moved to the Netherlands my boss told me to never spend more than 20 euro on a bike because it will get stolen. I didn't listen, and lo and behold two weeks in my 75 euro bike and the 35 euro heavy duty lock disappeared
I'm skeptical: * Where do you buy a ≤20 euro bike? * Most people on the street have bikes that look to be at least 200 euros new, from what I can tell.
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.
"The average car-buyer or metalworker" can already afford a $30 cordless angle grinder: https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/grinders/angle-gri... (Cost plus a $30-$80 battery, of course, but after you pick your color, you've already got batteries). Your locks are far more protected by the social contract that would compel a stranger to stop someone who was cutting a bike lock with an angle grinder, and would ca…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A dutch women told me once a story, where she but a used bike in Amsterdam and the heroin addict who sold it to her, threaten her to steal it again, if she does not use a heavy lock.
Does the Netherlands have a law against knowingly buying stolen property?
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.
"The average car-buyer or metalworker" can already afford a $30 cordless angle grinder: https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/grinders/angle-gri... (Cost plus a $30-$80 battery, of course, but after you pick your color, you've already got batteries). Your locks are far more protected by the social contract that would compel a stranger to stop someone who was cutting a bike lock with an angle grinder, and would ca…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The average car-buyer or metalworker" can already afford a $30 cordless angle grinder: https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/grinders/angle-gri... (Cost plus a $30-$80 battery, of course, but after you pick your color, you've already got batteries). Your locks are far more protected by the social contract that would compel a stranger to stop someone who was cutting a bike lock with an angle grinder, and would ca…
Don't cut vinyl with your laser, it will produce chlorine gas which will not be good for you to breathe and will corrode your equipment. Use a dragknife cutter instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I moved to the Netherlands my boss told me to never spend more than 20 euro on a bike because it will get stolen. I didn't listen, and lo and behold two weeks in my 75 euro bike and the 35 euro heavy duty lock disappeared
I'm skeptical: * Where do you buy a ≤20 euro bike? * Most people on the street have bikes that look to be at least 200 euros new, from what I can tell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Yeah, my larger point is that there are already plenty of ways to cut metal in a home workshop. I don't see how a laser would be an improvement on any of those, unless the goal is to CNC with extremely tight tolerances, but even then... it seems unlikely that you'll be CNCing blocks of metal, more likely just 2D cuts from sheets of metal, which is pretty limiting. It would certainly be fun for some stuff, but I think…