Laser Cutters: Where’s The Point?

It is funny how when you first start doing something, you have so many misconceptions that you have to discard. When you look back on it, it always seems like you should have known better. That was…

LightBurn Turns Back The Clock, Bails On Linux Users

Angry Birds, flash mobs, Russell Brand, fidget spinners. All of these were virtually unavoidable in the previous decade, and yet, like so many popular trends, have now largely faded into obscurity.…

Faux Silkscreen On A PCB Made With A Laser Cutter

If you’re getting PCBs professionally made, silkscreen usually comes free as part of the package. However, if you’re making your own, the job is on you. [Tony Goacher] makes his own PCB…

All I Want For Mr. Christmas Is Some New Music

You, it’s true; you really can find anything (except maybe LEGO) in thrift stores. When [thecowgoesmoo] picked up a Mr. Christmas Symphonium music box one day, they knew they wanted to make i…

Take The Tedium Out Of Fabric Cutting, Make The Laser Do It

Fabric must be cut before it can be turned into something else, and [fiercekittenz] shows how a laser cutter can hit all the right bases to save a lot of time on the process. She demonstrates proce…

An Open-Source Antikythera Mechanism

When the Antikythera Mechanism was first discovered, it wasn’t viewed as the wonder that we know it today. Originally the divers who found the device and the first scientists to look at it wr…

Getting A Rise With Laser Cutting

Your first 3D print probably seemed pretty amazing. But if you revisit it after a few years, you’ll likely notice it wasn’t nearly as good as you thought. We improve our printers and ou…

Tiny Orrery Keeps The Planets In Their Places

[Frans] claims to have made the world’s smallest orrery. We won’t take a position on that — such things are best left up to the good folks at Guinness. But given that the whole th…

Kerfmeter Measures Laser Cutter Kerf Allowances On The Fly

Nothing beats a laser cutter and a sheet of Baltic birch plywood or MDF when it comes to making quick, attractive enclosures. Burning out all the pieces and fitting them together with finger joints…

New Tool Helps Create Laser-Cut Doom Maps

Doom has a larger cultural footprint than the vast majority of video games ever made. That inspired [Theor] to see if it was possible to laser-cut some of the game’s maps to create a real-wor…

Debugging Laser Cut Wobble, The Scientific Way

[PWalsh] was using his lasercutter to cut acrylic, expecting the cuts to have a pleasantly smooth edge. Alas, the edges turned out to be wobbly and sandpaper-like, not smooth in the slightnest. Bum…

Laser-Cutting A Flurry Of Generative Snowflakes

It’s the holiday season, and what better way to celebrate than to carve out some generative snowflakes on your laser cutter? [Bleeptrack] has developed a web-based tool that creates generativ…

$60 Laser Makes The Cut With New Controller

If you are reading the Lightburn forums, you probably already have a laser cutter of some kind.  But, if you are like most of us, you can always be tempted into another “deal.” [Dkj4lin…

A Home Made Laser Cutter For 700$

While some decent lasers are out there for under USD 400, they tend to be a little small. What if you wanted something a little nicer but didn’t want to jump to the USD 2000 category? The ans…

3D Print Glass With A Laser Cutter

We’re all familiar with FDM 3D printing, and some of the more well-heeled or adventurous among us may even have taken a faltering step into the world of SLA printers. But for most of us there…

Hackaday Prize 2022: Upcycling Acrylic Scraps

Living and working in a remote rain forest may sound idyllic to those currently stuck in bland suburbia, and to be sure it does have plenty of perks. One of the downsides, though, is getting new ma…

Giant CNC Partners With Powerful Laser Diode

[Jeshua Lacock] from 3DTOPO owns a large-format CNC (4’x8′, or 1.2×2.4 m), that he strongly feels is lacking laser-cutting capabilities. The frame is there, and a 150 W CO2 laser t…

The Nine Dollar Laser Bed

A laser cutter bed has to be robust, fireproof, and capable of adequately supporting whatever piece of work is being done on the machine. For that reason they are typically a metal honeycomb, and c…

How To Make Laser-cut Decals On The Cheap

Want to make a sweet adhesive decal with a complex design and floating elements, but all you have is a laser cutter and some tape? Good news, because that’s all you need with this method of c…

Laser Z-Axis Table Comes Into Focus

Laser cutters and 3D printers are game-changing tools to have in the workshop. They make rapid prototyping or repairs to existing projects a breeze as they can churn out new parts with high precisi…