We Built a FRICKIN Laser Cutter - HOLY $H!T
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,452 words · ~7 min read
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freaking lasers whether they're coming out of a stormtrooper's blaster or
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they're mounted on the head of a shark they're undeniably badass and the go-to
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weapon for evil villains everywhere and
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now us in our quest to dominate youtube's
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tech vertical we will be harnessing the power of the laser so that we can
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wow guys really that's what we're using it for
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just like you'll be using Corsair's new hs50 if you need a wired three and a
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half millimeter headset it features metal structural components and 50
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millimeter neodymium drivers check it out at the link below
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you know you know what i i am i'm gonna wear them
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for over a year now alex has been trying to figure out how to make a laser cutter
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that's both powerful and cheap
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and that's where the good people at smart diy come in they had the smart
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idea to make a diy laser cutter kit
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giving you the capabilities of a prefab at a lower price by having you assemble
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it yourself so it's like ikea i guess
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and that's what we'll be doing today but first
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why do we want a laser cutter and what exactly is a laser cutter okay no i'm
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not gonna wear them the main things that people use them for
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are to accurately cut plastic or wood in
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two dimensions or to engrave basically
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any material and while we already have a 3d printer
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that can fabricate plastic parts in three dimensions
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because these parts get printed in layers they can only be their strongest
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in one direction at this time
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easily pulling apart in the other further contributing to their weakness
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is the time and cost associated with printing solid objects using fused
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deposition modeling so it's much cheaper and faster to make hollow stuff
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with a laser cutter though you can cut pieces of acrylic without giving up any
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of the strength of the original material this means you can build load-bearing
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things like drone components or computer cases using them
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so enough foreplay then let's meet the smart diy fabool c02 a 40 watt laser
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cutter kit hailing from japan we were initially worried this video
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wouldn't be that interesting then we opened up the packaging and holy
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frank look at that laser oh and also computer water cooling parts
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damn okay this should be fun the frame
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is made of aluminum extrusion that gets held in place using right angle brackets
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the instructions aren't perfect and you do have to pay really close attention to
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the text and pictures but if you follow them very carefully there's no reason to
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screw anything up now it's time for power there's actually one power supply
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already in here so that gives us one ac
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to dc power supply for the electronics then a switching power supply for the
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laser the next piece is the rail with the stepper motors once the tension is
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adjusted these tracks should allow our cutter to robot its way around the bed
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and then these big cable holder tank track chummies that i'm sure have a real
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name will keep it from snapping its wires cables go in the motor side then
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out on the bottom and over to the controller
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this can communicate to the outside once we have the i o panel attached which has
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usb ac power and also this weird fitting
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thing that i'm not totally sure what it does yet
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now it's time for water cooling the initial plan was to RGB it up and use
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our own lit af fans but unfortunately the fan controller uses proprietary
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wiring and we would need to do a fair bit of careful soldering to get power to
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our RGB controller so we decided to leave it stock although
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a hardline tubing upgrade is definitely still on the table down the line
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when it came time to mount the laser we realized that we didn't have a large
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enough allen key for these bolts so thank goodness for vice grips
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then we carefully put the laser on making sure not to tighten it down too
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hard or we could risk breaking it with the laser in wiring it up was pretty
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much a matter of following the diagram until everything but the pump is
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connected we'll plug that in once the reservoir is filled the only part of
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this build that didn't feel all that premium was the dampers for the top
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cover these long bolts are kind of jank
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but they do the trick and then with the acrylic installed on top it looks pretty
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good anyway okay but hold on a minute here if the
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laser is locked in place in the back
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how does it cut things ah
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well it actually gets bounced around to the desired location using front surface
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mirrors the first one goes back here on this
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piece of aluminum extrusion and then this is where this project
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started taking a bit longer than expected it would appear that a big part of the
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reason that laser cutters cost so much
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is because of how freaking long it takes to get them properly calibrated
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so the process is basically like this after putting on the protective not to
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mention very cool glasses that you need
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whenever the laser back is open you take the mirror and put a piece of masking
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tape over it then briefly radiate the laser which creates a burn mark on the
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tape to show where it's hitting you adjust until it hits in the center
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and then you're good to go no actually it's not quite that simple
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either since the laser beam needs to hit the center of all of the mirrors in all of
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their possible locations around the work area
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it actually was about a day of fine tuning before it was finally ready to go
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the last steps then were filling the loop putting on the final panels
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installing the software the process for which is conveniently entirely in
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japanese and booting it up
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and it works and it's in english actually
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so for our first test we'll engrave a dead meme on a dead pc side panel with
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okay so some small issues at first but we'll
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just turn vsync on here and uh hey the second half of the etching went
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without a hitch so guys as of filming this right now we
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just got this bad boy running and we definitely want to do a follow-up video
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so let us know what you want to see us do
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and uh we'll add it to the list of super cool projects that we have planned for
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the fabul co2 and on the subject of things that are
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happening by blocking all outbound and inbound traffic so nothing leaks out
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vigilant bear will kick back in and stop until the connection comes back so for a
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free trial of tunnelbear go to tunnelbear.com LTT we'll have that
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linked below thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it's
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awesome put on some glasses like this
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get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we
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featured in the video description also linked in the description is our
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merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which
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you should totally join