If you want an /easy/ way to do this, just buy something like a Roland DXY
type plotter off ebay.
I bought two, a roland DXY880 and another a roland dxy1280 I think.
Both do at 11x17 or bigger I think.
Anyway, I was planning on using these as a gantry for another project but
it's pretty flismy. The construction is cheap cheap plastic. The drive
mechanism is two wire piano wires hooked up to a stepper motor.
The nice thing about these things is there is a pen solenoid inside that is
12V. In the best case, you only need to desolder the solenoid and solder
the laser power leads from the driver onto the board. In the worst case,
there's a 5V ttl signal that goes on whenever the pen down function is
activated which can be used to drive a mosfet or other MCU+mosfet.
The Roland DXY even has a modern print driver. Just print from any
application, say Eagle PCB or Altium. No additional software needed.
Would make a cheap laser cutter/stencil maker if the laser is powerful
enough.
You could probably swap a far infrared laser diode for cutting organics (far
infrared seems to absorb into clear plastic very well from my CO2 laser
experience) like mylar or kapton film to make stencils also.
Since I have two that are sitting in my garage, I'd sell them for whatever I
paid for them which was somewhere between $80-150 (need to check my
receipt). Excellent condition and works great.
I can just use my CO2 laser gantry which I designed a controller for and
also already rasterscan engraves so no need for me. Too many projects too
little time.
Henry
On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 5:39 AM, Russell Shaw <rjshaw@...>wrote:
>
>
> Adam Seychell wrote:
> > Volkan Sahin wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Good idea. How to make reliable electrical power and video connection
> >> to the laser?
> >>
> >
> > Ok, maybe not such a good idea. Are laser scanners assemblies expensive ?
> >
> > Some searching revels:
> >
> >
> http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-cgi/jvcr13pz.cgi?E+MT+2+AHA1002+0+4+WW
> > http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/40569/SANYO/LB1872.html
> > http://projects.uniprecision.com/sc_upload/images/C060_DATASHEET_RAW.pdf
> >
> >
> > Still, cannot find a supplier of these "laser mirror scanner motors".
> > This looks like the way to go.
>
> You can drive the motor in any laser printer scanner head. It's only a
> problem
> getting motors if you want to build your own head and optics.
>
> You could pull apart an old hard-disk and mount a mirror on the platter.
> Drive the 3-phase motor yourself. At 30k rpm, you'll need to be very good
> at balancing/centralizing the mirror, and have it ∗firmly∗ stuck down or
> it might launch off in to outer space.
>
>
>
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