The Taig Lathe and Milling Machine
The Taig Lathe and Milling Machine
I have been wanting to get a laser cutter/engraver for a while now. Like, for a couple of decades. Just as with 3D printers, it’s only been within the past decade or so that laser cutters have first been affordable to build as a homebrew machine, and then affordable to purchase as a relatively inexpensive offering from China in the form of the explosively popular ‘K40’ lasers.
However, the ‘care and feeding’ of a CO2 tube laser is something that I did not want to have to deal with. Not only do they need water cooling, but the fragile glass laser tube doesn’t always endure international shipping and survive intact (leading to having to return the broken part, incur shipping costs for such, waiting weeks for a replacement, and so on). Plus, the K40 lasers have a very small working envelope around the size of a letter or A4 sheet of paper, whereas the project I had in mind needs aro
Enter the laser diode. Originally finding widespread use in CD players, laser diodes were quite limited in power output, perhaps on the order of 5 milliwatts or so (but that was plenty for playing CDs). As technology improved and laser diodes found new applications (barcode scanners, laser pointers, etc.), output power steadily increased. By 2010, hobbyists were tearing apart Blu-Ray burners for laser diodes that could output perhaps 200mW, and began building machines that could cut paper (albeit quite slow
The Taig Lathe and Milling Machine
The Taig Lathe and Milling Machine