My first DIY laser cutter

My first attempt to build a lasercutter.

The laser is a 450 mw red laser, that cuts constructionpaper and foam, and like here engraves in wood.

The driver for the stepper motors are simple, just two uln2003.

The software used is EMC2 on a linux based laptop.

Yes, you can make EMC2 control steppers, without the usual direction control, and hardware encoders.

This setup is too bad for anything serius, it suffers from that the screws are not 100 % alaigned with the steppers.

I used steel roods, with some cobbertubes to do the sleed, but even when lubricated it chops a bit.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Laser
• cutter
• DIY

[freeebord]

This is a great project! I have been working on something like this using an Arduino and EMC2 for the controller software. The ULN2003's are a great choice because of their simplicity. Do you have the configuration files for this project??

[MuzzaHukka]

I'm running Linux Ubuntu 10.10. Hey, could you email me the schematics to muzzahukka@yahoo.co.uk ? I am planning to build a cutter using a DVD Drive laser.