Guidance & Suggestions Appreciated!

[WhoolieShop]

We develop products for the ATV / UTV community, specifically electronics such as light controllers, audio systems and so forth. Our customers subject their rides to some really extreme conditions, including deep water riding, buried in mud, caked in snow as well as vibration and temperature extremes...

There aren't a ton of products out there capable of withstanding all of these extremes thus we needed to start developing some of our own electronics because other solutions just weren't tough enough.

This lead to us prototyping PCB's in house rather than making a design, waiting on the boards to come back, then testing them and changing them before the final design was decided upon.

Currently we use the laser printer toner transfer method which does work but has some shortcomings. We want to be able to take a copper clad board, paint it black then burn off the paint with a laser so that we can etch the copper chemically.

That being said:

I have obtained a 500mW 405nm S06J Blu-Ray Laser in a housing with a attached Microboost Driver & Aixiz Glass lens.

and using stepper motors and drivers and have constructed a small x/y gantry large enough for a proof of concept.

There are plenty of computer to laser cutter howtos out there but I have a few questions for the laser guys.

1) Most of these setups are square and parallel to the work, if I burn the paint off of a copper clad board will a direct reflection of the laser hurt my diode or my lens?

2) I know that some lasers vaporize some materials/colors better than others.. I would like to be able to etch a design/model number/connection information directly on a plastic housing if possible. The housings we are currently using are black ABS plastic.. Will this laser etch a design into this material?

3) A bigger gantry will be in the works if we are successful with our smaller projects we would eventually like to etch or maybe even cut clear lexan/plexiglass. Is this possible with this diode or will we need to move to a more powerful co2 style laser?

4) I plan to use a converted power supply from a PC to power the steppers and laser (as it's already up and running on the test bench anyway) A micro controller will tell the laser when to turn off and on possibly by a mosfet turning on the power to the boost driver.. Is this the best way to achieve this? or should the driver remain powered and the connection to the driver/diode be switched instead?
Thanks so much for your input!

 

[bobhaha]

Hey mate,

Here are my answers:

1. If you are using a laser in the visible spectrum then anything that is shiny to your eyes, e.g. polished aluminium, silvered glass etc... is also shiny to the laser. Copper clad board is not shiny so it will be safe to point it at the board without worry for reflections.

2. Most probably given enough time.

3. Cutting is completely out of the question. For 3mm acrylic your looking at at least 30W's to cut it. I happen to work at a laser cutter manufacturing company. If you are interested in a small scale laser cutting system let me know I can hook you up.

4. The former will work better. Turning on and off mosfets can have overshoot and ringing associated to high speed switching. You are better off turning the driver on and off. So PSU --> Mosfet --> Driver --> Diode.

To be honest a 500mW diode is not the solution you are looking for. You will need to move so incredibly slow in order for anything, if at all, happens. A proper solution would be a small form factor laser cutter. You will be able to engrave much quicker with a CO2 laser, not to mention on many many more substrates too. You can also cut through multiple different materials with ease, which is completely out of the realm of possibility with your current setup.