frikkin' laser beams

just found a fun page on making a homegrown CO2 laser - [www.altair.org] - & was idly wondering if it would be possible to rep-rap plasma tubes for them, I've seen handblown glass CO2 lasers before and they work really well. If that bit gets solved, then the only other thing required is the swimming pool full of sharks...

The hard(er) part is the optics; you need the bumpiness of the optics to be smaller than the wavelength of light that you're using. According to Sam's Laser FAQ, "the output of a CO2 laser is medium-IR radiation at 10.6 um", which is << than our print size of 0.5 mm ( 500 um ). (I'm not sure what size features we'll get with inkjet printing.)

The glass tubing is comparatively cheap:
[stores.ebay.com]
$10 for a 15mm x 2ft tube.

A reprap might be useful for hardware like ceramic standoffs, endplates, and other hardware which would otherwise need a lathe + drill press or a mill.

This is a fun site:
[www.madehow.com]

... for low-energy-CO2-lasers you can use simple metallized glass-mirrors (e.g. salvaged from scanners) in the optical setup.

The only noncommon part is the focussing lens - here i used Germanium-lenses or from ZnSn.

ZnSn-lenses are better, as you can feed a pilot-beam from a laserpointer throug, Germanium didn't transmit visible light ...

I used 1,5Watt-CW-CO2-lasers with open glasstubes and sealed 3Watt-RF-types in the past for cutting plastic-sheets, what worked very well, but you have to deal with a fast shutter or you build a driver-electronic capable of fast regulating the 1,5kV needed for the plasma-charging by PWM.

Viktor

Okay, so I just started looking in to the reprap-project, and it's a really cool one! But this laser-thing is getting out of hand!

You are talking about building a selfreplicating robot, with LASERS!

... actually a comercial laser-cutter cutting metal-sheets for building/assembling lasercutters would fit in the same category ... and the lasers are much stronger/dangerous - but nobody is suspecting there is something horrific on the way

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]