- Joined
- Oct 24, 2006
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Well, because of intellectual property and all that jazz I can't let y'all in on everything, but I recently worked on a project for the lab I work for that should interest you laser geeks =P. Its not too hard for us to make <$1,000 purchases, but anything more than that turns into a bureaucratic impossibility. With precise laser engravers running magnitudes more than that, we got to work on an old HP7470A pen plotter that was laying around (For those of you who aren't ancient like SenKat, think of a plotter as an old-school printer that physically moved a pen around on a piece of paper)
So after spending ages figuring out how to get it computer controlled we manage to hook up a laser based around one of SenKat/Stonetek's red diodes. One of the eventual goals is to burn a grid of 10 micrometer holes into carbon nanotube forests. So far we've managed to get 20-25 micrometer holes but the plotter ain't really accurate to get tighter than that. Here's a pic of that anyway. Nothing too impressive, but keep in mind each hole is only ~1/45th of a millimeter in diameter:
More impressive though is this little shameless promotion I did for Greg/SenKat and StoneTek Electronics. The machine is much better at burning electrical tape
:
I really encourage you to check this pic out at full size at: http://www.pseudonomen.com/lasers/stonetek.jpg
Here's a video of it in action (yep, its slow as hell). Please ignore all the random people talking in the backround (one of whom destroyed my first forest sample when she dropped it, grr):
[urlhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK1_jK4xBW0[/url]
Honda stopped by around that time so we also burned their logo into a nanotube forest. That pic is on a computer hundreds of miles away right now though, so I'll post it when I get back in a week.
So after spending ages figuring out how to get it computer controlled we manage to hook up a laser based around one of SenKat/Stonetek's red diodes. One of the eventual goals is to burn a grid of 10 micrometer holes into carbon nanotube forests. So far we've managed to get 20-25 micrometer holes but the plotter ain't really accurate to get tighter than that. Here's a pic of that anyway. Nothing too impressive, but keep in mind each hole is only ~1/45th of a millimeter in diameter:
More impressive though is this little shameless promotion I did for Greg/SenKat and StoneTek Electronics. The machine is much better at burning electrical tape
:
I really encourage you to check this pic out at full size at: http://www.pseudonomen.com/lasers/stonetek.jpg
Here's a video of it in action (yep, its slow as hell). Please ignore all the random people talking in the backround (one of whom destroyed my first forest sample when she dropped it, grr):
[urlhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK1_jK4xBW0[/url]
Honda stopped by around that time so we also burned their logo into a nanotube forest. That pic is on a computer hundreds of miles away right now though, so I'll post it when I get back in a week.
