Shooting Down Satellites.

I did my first laser test today, with great success!
Here's what I've done over the last few days:
Laser mirrors fron a harddrive platter. I had my doubts but I thought, what do I have to loose? And I can report: it works!
I masking tapped both sides of a newly discected hard drisk, clamped between two sheets of Melemine chipboard and cut with a bimetal holesaw...carefully.

Here is a picture of the mirror on the plate from the top of the flying head.

I decided I need a visual referance that all the bits and pieces were switched on, pump, compressor, laser power supply and extraction(when ever I get around to that one!)
I spotted this switched splitter with neons in Tesco for €11.50 so I decided to go for it. It will save alot of wiring and switches.

For the cooling of the laser cutter I got a large tub from my local vet (Avondale Veteranary "A great place to get your balls cut off") I would think its at least 30 litres.
I decided to go mad and get electrical cable glands to try seal the tub all together, they are a very neat, sealed system for this kind of thing.

 

The pump I'm trying is a 10euro campervan water pump. It will pump at least 2.5m head. At 14lpm it should be plenty of flow to keep the 40watt laser cool. I got that pump on Ebay from the UK.

That jubalee clip, by the way is a stainless steel as it will be submerged.

Some progress(is better than none)

 Above is the new table I built for the cutter, nothing to explain here, I think the photo speaks for itself. Thats 1" ply on the top. I will build a cover eventually...

This is a shot of the controller in its case. An old computer case, at first I thought it would be way too large but now that I realise how many wires are going to be in there I'm glad.
In the box are:
2 motor drivers,
1 Leetro Controller
1 old DVD player power supply(24v for the Leetro board){Accross -12v to +12v. Not sure if thats a good idea but its working!}
1 36v power supply (for motors and air solenoid valve)
1 Neon panel switch.
                 

Leetro Machine Controller Arrival!

I splashed out when I saw a Leetro laser cutter machine controller for sale on eBay.
It's one of these!
I was origanally going to try to botch my way through it with Mach2/3. But I saw this and decided it was too good an opertunity to pass.

I have had some success in past using a diode laser on my CNC and using the 0.0016 as my cutting depth and using the direction pin as digital on/off for the laser. The process is detailed elsewhere on the web and a search will bring it up so I won't explain here. Worth looking into to play around with a diode laser on a cnc router.