matseng
0
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2013
- Messages
- 2
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I'm more or less a total noob when it comes to high powered lasers. The last time I actually used a laser (except for the regular cheap laser pointers) was like 30 years ago when I purchased a dammned expensive 5 mW Melles-Griot He-Ne and was playing around with making holographic images.
But now I'm toying with the idea of recreating a modern version of the old Paper Tape Punch that they used for computers back in the 60'es and 70'ies. https://www.google.com/search?q=paper+tape+punch&source=lnms&tbm=isch
The mechanical punchers are really hard to find today and they are bloody expensive if you're even lucky to find one.
My idea here is to slice up regular thermal paper rolls, like they have in cash registers and point of sales terminals, into 1" wide slices and then have an array of 9 lasers in the hope that they could to burn rather well defined holes in the paper. Using thermal paper will hopefully make it easier to burn a hole since it is rather thin and also turns black when heated.
So what power to I need to poke a hole in thermal paper reasonably fast, say less than one second? And would the wavelength of the laser affect the speed in any way? Blue/Green/Ir?
If the burning speed is high enough I might only need one laser and have a surface mirror controlled by a stepper to burn the holes one-by-one in each row instead of all of them in one go.
But now I'm toying with the idea of recreating a modern version of the old Paper Tape Punch that they used for computers back in the 60'es and 70'ies. https://www.google.com/search?q=paper+tape+punch&source=lnms&tbm=isch
The mechanical punchers are really hard to find today and they are bloody expensive if you're even lucky to find one.
My idea here is to slice up regular thermal paper rolls, like they have in cash registers and point of sales terminals, into 1" wide slices and then have an array of 9 lasers in the hope that they could to burn rather well defined holes in the paper. Using thermal paper will hopefully make it easier to burn a hole since it is rather thin and also turns black when heated.
So what power to I need to poke a hole in thermal paper reasonably fast, say less than one second? And would the wavelength of the laser affect the speed in any way? Blue/Green/Ir?
If the burning speed is high enough I might only need one laser and have a surface mirror controlled by a stepper to burn the holes one-by-one in each row instead of all of them in one go.