Laser Drill

[macrumpton]

hi,
I make stuff out of coroplast, those plastic panels that are sort of like corrugated cardboard that are used for election and real estate signs. I need to make some long holes in in the coroplast that are parallel to the surface. I have been trying to use drill bits but some of the holes are 40" long and the drill bit often wanders away from the intended path.

It occured to me after seeing a laser ignite a match a few feet away that it might be a better option than the drill. I saw some kits on ebay for 150mw BluRay lasers and 300mw red lasers and for $35 I think it is worth trying out.

I have a few concerns:
The coroplast is white so it will reflect at least some of the light/heat away.
The laser will have to melt through dozens of thin plastic walls (each about as thick as card stock paper) as it does holes across the flutes of the coroplast.
How powerful a laser do I need? Is blue better than red? is it twice as good for the same wattage?

Any advice anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Michael

 

[pseudolobster]

They had laser drills at my school, we all had to hide under our desks and cover our eyes :crackup:

Anyways, a laser is a poor choice for this... You'll need well over a watt, and I think it'll end up melting more than it bores. If you had a $20,000 laser cutter over 20 watts or so, then maybe it might be possible, but that's going to be completely unfeasible for any hobbyist laser made out of DVD drives.

I wonder if maybe you can turn the plastic 90 degrees so the corrugations are parallel to the direction you want your hole, then hey presto, the hole's already there.. If you need to widen it, it'll be easier with a drill since the corrugations will act as a guide.

 

[macrumpton]

Thanks for the quick reply. As far as the melting more than boring, that might be OK. I have a crazy scheme to pressurize the inside of the flutes in the panel so as the laser melted spots on the walls they would inflate and pop because of the air pressure, revealing the next wall behind the one that just melted. Because the holes need to be at various angles on different parts of the panel I can't just use the natural holes that the flutes make. Would an infra red laser be better or worse for this?

 

[lordoflasers]

An infrared laser would not be any different than blu-ray or red unless you are talking about watts( thousands of mWs ). The lasers we build on this forum are made with dvd and blu-ray cd burners. A couple of the members were lucky enough to get 500mW from a blu-ray burner laser. That's still only half of a Watt. You would need a CO2 laser for the application your talking about, and it would be quite dangerous.

Steve

 

[Flaminpyro]

I use $24,000.00 15watt CO2 laser to cut, bore, scribe and engrave with and that is what you are going to need to do this project I'm afrade, you need the focusing power of nothing less to bore through 40" of material and keep the hole small it realy is the lenses and there assoc focusing mech that make a laser cost so much.

Peace All...