Will this mean affordable home laser cutters can finally cut metal in addition to things like wood, leather, and plastic?
A tiny ultrabright laser that can melt steel
61–70 of 200 posts
Re: A tiny ultrabright laser that can melt steel
#62This article smells so much the "if you want the eternal life, give me more money right now".
Re: A tiny ultrabright laser that can melt steel
#63A 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).
Re: A tiny ultrabright laser that can melt steel
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same can be said of BB guns that can put out eyes, lock picks that can open locked doors, and bolt cutters than can break chains. More powerful tools are a good thing.
A BB gun has to be used very intentionally to hurt your eyes. A high-powered laser could blind you because your neighbor is doing some work on his shed and you caught a reflection
Diffuse reflection is only dangerous up to a few feet away. You're neighbor would have to be deliberately aiming the beam at your eye to blind you assuming you're not in the shed with them.
Re: A tiny ultrabright laser that can melt steel
#65A 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.
Because of this Switzerland has outlawed portable laser pointers higher than the lowest class.
Anything more powerful than a low end projector pointer is now classified as a weapon and regulated as such.
This at least keeps these units out of the hands of the general public and those that can't use them responsibly.
It sucks for those of us who used them responsibly just like we did with RC aircraft before drones became an item on a discount shelve. However at least I know that if I go to a large event or even a demo I won't be permanently blinded by some idiot.
Re: A tiny ultrabright laser that can melt steel
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of locks are mostly just for show anyway. See Lockpicking Lawyers youtube channel.
Yes, but the average bike thief is looking for an easy steal and will avoid wasting time on a locked bike. Bikes in the Netherlands usually have 2 locks (a wheel lock and an extra chain), so thieves will usually move on from those first. A portable laser might allow a thief to steal even previously safer bikes just because it makes it quicker and silent (I'm assuming both).
Probably not. Heating steel doesn't cut it, it just forms a puddle of molten metal that will cling to the base material. For cutting to work, you need to blow it off somehow.
For plasma and oxy-fuel cutting, the hot gases coming out the nozzle acts as the mass that blows it off. Air carbon arc gouging uses regular compressed air to push the molten material away. I imagine industrial laser cuttings dealing with anything larger then a few millimetres thick would use compressed air as well.
I doubt a smaller more efficient laser is going to change that reality.
Re: A tiny ultrabright laser that can melt steel
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The precision of a laser cutter would open up a lot of possibilities. Particularly making things that slot together with tabs - like fabbing my own welding squares and fixtures where a cnc plasma cutter would leave too rough an edge to have them slot together accurately.
Can't you buy a CNC mill/router that can cut metal more precisely than a CNC plasma cutter?
Re: A tiny ultrabright laser that can melt steel
#68Earlier 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…
A question I've always had: How do I know if my glasses protect against a particular laser? I'm talking about the ones in hobby CNC machines, laser hair removal places, etc, not high-powered industrial ones, where there's likely a high degree of know-how on safety already?
Best bet is to buy two pairs and stick one in the path of the beam with a sensor or target behind it. Otherwise you're looking up charts for the materials spectral absorption in your lasers emission band
Re: A tiny ultrabright laser that can melt steel
#69A 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.
A hard kill APS might help.
Re: A tiny ultrabright laser that can melt steel
#70Can 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?
Yes, there are such printers in existence already --- they either use a laser to melt a layer of metal powder, or spray a binding agent on a layer of plastic powder --- for the latter it's possible to include a colouring agent and get full-colour 3D plastic prints. Search term is "Laser powder bed fusion" (as opposed to the trademark: "Direct Metal Laser Sintering" as was pointed out below) https://www.3dsourced.com/…
Laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) is the more standardized term. DMLS was a trademark.