Hello from Enland

Just found the site a few days ago while looking for information on the use of lasers for engraving wood so thought I would join in order to ask any questions I come up with.

I'm Glyn, from Rotherham in England, mid 40's now, with a background in electronics, IT and photography. Currently unemployed but working on it, lol.

In the middle of an X-Y table build for laser engraving, most of the parts are ordered and on their way. Eventually I may go down the route of CO2 if I need too, but for now I decided to start out simple an go with diodes.

I have an assortment of broken DVD-RW's to salvage various parts from (£0.99 ebay find) as well as a LG BH10LS30 x10 bluray (£13 ebay find). I have a couple of LM2596 DC-DC step down converters, constant voltage and current regulators winging their way to me as well as a housing for the DVD-RW diodes (only just got the bluray and not had time to order a housing yet).

I imagine most of my questions will be around getting the most out of these reliably, and controlling the power output from my Arduino as laser engraving photos is what I'm really looking at just now.

Welcome to LPF!

Welcome to LaserPointerForums!
Make sure you spend some time reading the stickies! :beer:

Have a nice day,
Jim

Hey, South Yorks!


Welcome.

Welcome to LPF, Glyn. I'm relatively new to this hobby, but have some other commonalities with you in 40's, photography, and IT (networking). This is a great interweb destination for all things laser related as you've likely surmised. Just snoop around and use the search tool for topics that interest you before you spam questions likely answered dozens of times before... it's sort of a cultural thing here and demonstrates some self-sufficiency in locating well documented information. That's really the only advice I can offer to a newcomer on the forum other than don't be afraid to ask if you can't find what you are looking for in the archives. There are a tremendous number of people here that genuinely care about helping new hobbyists like us and the cumulative wealth of laser-related knowledge represented on the forum is staggering.

Have fun and be safe... cheers!

c

Thanks for the welcome, I'll certainly look around for answers before I post any questions