Laser Power Supply
eBay had an amazing deal on
high-power IR lasers. I want to build a
laser cutting tool with one of the laser
diodes. The heatsink isn't a problem,
but I'm having trouble designing a
constant current power supply that
can handle the 50W laser. The
commercial power supplies are
hundreds of dollars. Any suggestions?
#4146 Carl Edwards
Santa Fe, NM
[#2142 - February 2014]
Laser Cutter To 3D Printer
I want to move from a mill to a 3D
printer to fabricate parts. As far as printing materials go, I've heard that regular
plastic is toxic and print quality is poor,
and the PLA alternative is brittle and
heavy. What's the best printing material out there? Are there better choices?
3D printers (a.k.a., rapid prototyping machines) and laser cutters are
very different animals. The laser cutter
can be used to "machine" metals by
laser ablation of the surfaces. A 3D
printer (such as MakerBot) uses a
curable plastic powder or filament for
producing layer upon layer renditions
of whatever you draw on a Computer
Aided Drawing (CAD) system.
Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)
filaments produce stronger products
than the usual ABS plastic materials.
(A UT Austin student reportedly made
a working pistol out of ABS but I
am not sure I would want to trust my
safety to the strength of plastic in
this case.)
The replicator (3D printer) will run
about $3,000. MakerBot also sells a
digitizer for about $1,000 which
allows you to reproduce an existing
product by scanning it into the computer versus the laborious process of
producing a 3D CAD drawing. Using
the replicator and the digitizer/CAD
system together makes it possible to
produce nearly anything you can
imagine as long as it fits into the 3D
printer. I have seen a complete ball
bearing set made as one piece (no
assembly required) on a old 3D printer which moved exactly like a metal
bearing produced by sophisticated
machining processes, but the plastic
did not have the strength to hold up in
service. I can see using ceramic materials which can be fired to produce
strength as a future wave in 3D printing.
Tim Brown PhD EE, PE
via email
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