I built this laser cutter after being inspired by this laser cutter and the design is almos identical, there for I will not go into details about my build but will instead focus on what you can do with it.

Since the diode (LPC-826) I have used is from a DVD burner and have an output power of 300-400 mW, it can’t be considered very powerful when it comes to cutting lasers. It should not be confused with a CO2 laser which have an output power of 50W, which is the type of laser that is normally is used in professional laser cutters.

The materials I have tried so far are:

• Adhesive plastic (stickers) – Cuts right through
• Art Foam/EVA foam – Cuts right through
• Wood – It burns the wood but does not cut. Can be used for engraving.
• Paper – Black copy paper can easily be cut but thicker paper does not work. White paper does not work.
• ABS Plastic – The surface melts so it is possible to engrave but it can’t be cut.
• Plexiglass – Not a mark.
• Plasticard – The thinnest sheet I tried could be cut at low speed but only after having been painted black.

Adhesive plastic

This is what I find by far the most useful application for this laser cutter. So far it has been able to cut through any type and color of the adhesive plastic that I have tried. It is quite easy to cut stencils or stickers. I often use it for cutting custom drilling and cutting templates for other projects. If you want to know how to use photoshop to create stencils from pictures stencil revolution has a good tutorial.

I did some experimentation with masking off parts of a steel plate with laser cut stencils and then I created rust by using Hydrochloric acid and Hydrogen peroxide. It worked pretty well however I need to work some more on the proportions between the Hydrochloric acid and the Hydrogen peroxide to get a nice rust coating on the unmasked metall. A word of caution, do NOT do this inside. I did and now I have a nice rust coat on every un protected piece of metal in my lab. Also wear gloves and eye protection. If you want more details about on the method I used to create these look in the comments for the video.

Art Foam/EVA foam

I have not done much cutting in EVA foam, mainly because I have not had any use for it. But if you are building small models and need laser cut parts this laser will get the job done for you.

Wood

Wood can be burnt but not cut. So if you are the woodworking type you might have a use for it. Sometimes I have seen that the laser does not start to burn instantly and that it takes a darker part of wood for the laser to get started, once it has started to smoke it goes on burning from that point.

ABS Plastic

When it comes to hard plastics like ABS it can melt the surface but not burn through. So just like it is with wood it is possible to engrave on ABS. The picture shows a quick test and is not the most beautiful thing I have done but it gives you an idea what to expect.

Hardware

If you are still interested in the hardware here is a quick rundown of the parts.

Mechanical

The whole frame is made from wood and the sliding tray slides on drawer sliders. Both x and y-axis are propelled by an M6 threaded rod.

The coupling between the frame and threaded rod consists of a M6 extension nut that I have incased in Polymorph plastic, Polymorph plastic softens enough to be molded by hand if you put it into boiling water and after it cools down it feels as hard as vinyl, very handy for motor mounts and this type of applications.

Motors

Both motors are NEMA17 stepper motors, 200 steps per revolution.

Laser

The laser is a MITSUBISHI/658nm-660nm 300-400mw CW Red Laser Diode/LPC-826 that I bought from eBay. It is mounted in a standard 5.6mm Laser Diode housing with a round heat sink. It is powered by a LM2596S based power module with built in current limitation. This way you will not risk feeding the laser to much power.

The LCP-826 diode should be run at an operation current <400mA and operation voltage <2.2V. To achieve this I started by connecting the 12V I use to drive the stepper motors to the IN on the DC-DC step down module. Then I connected a multimeter in Voltage measuring mode to the output on the board and adjusted the potentiometer closest to the input terminal on the card until I had 2.2V on the output. After I hade the desired voltage I changed the multimeter setting to Ampere measuring mode, remember to move the cable, and then adjusted the potentiometer closest to the output until I had a current output of 400mA. The middle potentiometer controls one of the diodes on the charger circuit and you can adjust it to set at what current the diod should light up.

The laser is turned on and off from the spindel on/off pin of the Arduino nano. Spindel on/off is connected to an Logic level Mosfet which enables me to control a 12V signal from the Arduino.

Remember that you should always wear laser eye protection when using this kind of lasers. When I started to build this laser cutter I decided to buy a pair of laser protection glasses. After doing some reading I decided on a pair from dragonlasers.com called LSG08. The LSG08 are designed to block light at the frequency 190-450nm and 598-752nm which covers this laser. I am no expert but from what I found after some reading I wanted a pair that was OD5-6 certified. OD stands for optical density and each step on the scale is a factor of ten. So OD1 will reduce the amount of light of a specific frequency by 10, OD2 would reduce it by 100 etc. Here is a diagram of the LSG08 light blocking properties.

I am not saying that the really cheap glasses that you can buy of e-bay for around won’t work but I didn’t want to take that chance. The ones I got from dragon lasers does seem to work very well since I can still see! What is important is that the laser protection glasses are designed to block the frequency of your laser. If you are using a infrared laser then this is extremely important since the light is not visible to the naked eye.

Electronics

The stepper motors are controlled by two Easy driver stepper motor drivers. The Easy drivers are connected to an Arduino nano which is running grbl 0.8. They are connected as described on the grbl wiki page. Power to the laser is turned on and off using a logic level mosfet.

Limit switches

Software

For software I use UniversalGcodeSender-v1.0.6 to send the gcode to the Arduino that has been loaded with grbl 0.8. To create the gcode from an image I use Inkscape together with the LaserEngraver plugin. The whole procedure is very well documented in this instructable written by Groover.